Lets review something, because I need to and I just finished this one, this is Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions.
Yuta Togashi is the Dark Flame Master! At least he was; back in junior high he developed this unusual persona, for reasons of sounding awesome at the time but upon going through middle school and starting high school he stopped being the Dark Flame Master and started acting normal. This is explained as Chunibyo, a state where you develop a behavior that draws attention to yourself which can take the form of a deliberate anti-social personality, a superiority complex or in the case of this series, complete delusional feeling of having supernatural abilities; this is surprisingly common and people simply grow out of it but for Yuta his past comes back to haunt him when a Chunibyo girl named Rikka Takanashi drops into his life who herself claims to possess the Eye of the Wicked Lord and even has other friends who engage in this Chunibyo state, with Rikka seemingly drawn to Yuta and Rikka's older sister blackmailing Yuta into watching over her, Yuta is stuck in the life he tried to leave behind.
This anime is a mixed bag, on the one hand it's clever story telling, brilliant voice work from both sides of the sub and dub, well written characters and some really emotional moments really give a believable feel to how the characters interact and react, it's almost as if a psychologist made this, made more plausible when you discover why Rikka acts the way she does through the episodes focusing on her family and past and why she's so desperate to find the Ethereal Horizon.
However on the other side of the coin, jokes out stay their welcome, there really isn't enough time to develop late arriving characters and quite a large number of scenes were poorly strung together, another 30 seconds was needed in each episode just to better thread the individual scenes together. I'm glad there's a season 2 because there are far too many things left unresolved and I won't tick this off as a good anime until season 2 can do that, otherwise it's at least half way there.
Again the dub is fantastic, so credit where credit is due.
Final Verdict: I would normally avoid these anime but it's clever writing kept me intrigued until the end, and while it's worn out jokes and pacing is an issue, it's vocal performances and story are worth sticking around for and with a season 2 available I hope I can finish this series strongly.
