First loves are never easy no matter the configuration.
What They Say:
World’s Greatest First Love contains episodes 1-12 of Season 1 and episodes 13-24 of Season 2 plus OVA’s.
First love is a precious thing. The racing of hearts, the fluttering of stomachs – it’s a feeling that remains a fond and treasured memory. That is, unless you’re Ritsu Onodera. After his first love with a handsome upperclassman ends in heartbreak, Onodera is over the troubles of love. But even without it, his life is still miserable.
When he decides to transfer to Marukawa Publishing as an editor, he winds up working in the shoujo manga department with the intimidating editor-in-chief, Masamune Takano – who happens to be the senpai who broke his heart! Can Onodera balance the hectic life of a manga editor and the enduring advances of Takano? Boy’s love is in the air!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track only in stereo encoded at 192kbps. The show is one that’s pretty much almost entirely dialogue oriented with what it does outside of some music bits here and there where things swell a bit. With it focusing on the interactions between characters, it’s mostly a center channel based project where the varying levels of the dialogue works well as there are quite a few moments where it’s softer and more intimate. While there isn’t much that really stands out here with the show in terms of its audio design it’s one that works as it should with the kind of material we have. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally airing in 2011, the transfer for this T series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is enhanced for anamorphic playback. The twenty-six episodes here are spread across four discs with seven on each of the first three and five on the last one. Animated by Studio Deen, the series has a good look to it overall with a soft and clean look to it that plays to the genre well. There’s some good detail to the character designs throughout and the smoothness of movement certainly kicks up from time to time. What I do like is how good the settings and backgrounds look as there’s some really nice detail to it that makes it feel lived in. While not a lavishly designed show or one that overworks the color design, it fits in with the genre well and the transfer captures the look and feel in all the right ways.
Menu:
The menu design for this release brings in elements from the packaging and the show itself with its opening and closings when it comes to the backgrounds. It has some nice color design with the softer tones, such as the pinks and whites on the first disc, where it has a nice bit of scrapbook elegance. While half of it works that with the logo and navigation, which works smoothly and problem free, the other half has the white background card piece that shows various character configurations across it. It has some good pop to it and the detail is definitely nice in how it all comes together. They’re very clean menus that set the tone well for the show with a bit of good color choices. The menus are pretty good for this DVD release and everything is setup well to get you into the mood of the show.
Extras:
The only extras included with this release are the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the boys-love manga of the same name by Shungiku Nakamura, Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi is a twenty-four episode series directed by Chiaki Kon that had two OVAs produced for it as well. Animated by studio Deen and airing in 2011 with both parts of it, the show was one of a rare number of boys-love properties to make it to the small screen. The manga series had five volumes in its run when it came out and is up to eleven now and still going with Viz Media’s SuBLime Manga imprint picking it up. Boys-love series aren’t all that common in the greater scheme of things and this is the first one that Funimation has licensed, expanding their horizons a bit.
For me, these series are a boon and a bane with what they are. The big pluses for me come in two areas. The first is that they’re likely to focus on older characters than the usual teenyboppers we get in many series these days and that has some big differences in how the stories are told. The second is that relationships, for better or worse, actually progress. A lot of these shows start where most other shows end, if they even get to that point, with characters actively making moves and declaring intentions or, gasp, actually kissing. The downside? The power dynamic in these shows are hugely problematic if they were done with heterosexual couples, to the point where there’d be quite the outcry by many. What we get here is fairly normal within the genre, particularly from this started back in 2006 in manga form and from that generation of creators – which actually eased up on things a bit from the previous generation that had almost torture porn levels at times.
The series revolves primarily around twenty-five-year-old Ritsu, a young man who has just arrived at Marukawa Shoten Publishing where he’s looking to get further in his editing career. He’s always looking at the next step and even before he meets his new editor in chief, he’s already thinking about his next company he’ll work at and how this job will help him. The problem comes when he learns he won’t be working on literature but rather will become a shoujo manga editor. And Ritsu positively hates shoujo. When he meets the other editors in his group, he realizes just what a strange group of people they are and that they’re pretty much his view of a certain segment of publishing that’s annoying, doesn’t smell good and always trying to get out of things. What really gets him is his editor in chief, a brooding type that’s tall, handsome and definitely a dominant person because of his personality and position.
What makes it worse in the long run is that even after getting dressed down in the workplace by Masamune, Ritsu will learn in another episode that he actually changed his last name some years ago and is actually an upperclassman that he had feelings for back in high school and confessed to, which we see at the opening of the episode. That sets the stage for a difficult, if not hostile, work environment for Ritsu but the job is important even though he doesn’t like it and Masamune has a certain style. Before Ritsu even knows who he is, Masamune pushes him up against a wall in a public workspace and gives him a good, hard kiss. Ritsu’s not the only one surprised, but things settle down a bit from there and work continues apace.
The focus early on with Ritsu with all the internal monologue coming from him is pretty well done as he tries to cope with the strange work situation he’s in, both from the kind of material he has to work with but also the interpersonal problems with Masamune. With the revelation about Masamune not coming until later, though the viewer knows it from the start, watching these two go through the work experience together without realizing it is a fair bit of fun. It has a very, very detailed look at times and feels like a great environment brought to life but it also knows how to have a bit of fun. There’s a real passion for manga that’s shown here and Masamune makes it clear that he has to realize that there are many people who would kill to be in his position because of their passion for shoujo manga. There’s some background material that creeps in about Ritsu’s past as well, with his family connections that likely will be more important as the show goes on, but it simply adds a nice bit of mystery for the start here to be exploited later.
Where the show loses me a bit is around episode five where the series decides to take a bit of a different track as it introduces us to the popular author of girls manga, Chiharu Yoshikawa. Unlike what you’d expect, said author isn’t a young woman but rather a young man named Chiaki who is a rather outgoing and fun guy but definitely not what you’d call manly or independent. He’s pretty much tied to the apron strings of his editor, Hatori, who is also his childhood friend that he knows very well. Shifting the focus to Chiaki isn’t too much of a surprise as it seems to be a rather tried and true piece of the puzzle for properties of this nature, but it is frustrating in a way as I really liked what I got out of the first four episodes and want to see more of that.
For Chiaki, he does get the bug put in his head about his being dependent on Hatori and starts to try and figure out what it really means for him. Where things go off the rails for him though, enough so that it impacts his work, is when he goes out and accidentally comes across Hatori, who is with another friend of his named Yanase. And he sees them kissing, though it’s in a bit of anger and frustration on Hatori’s part towards Yanase. They didn’t see him there, but it’s seeping into every part of Chiaki’s life as he can’t figure out why Hatori would do that and what it all means. It does painy the picture of a mangaka who is pretty out of touch with certain parts of reality, but considering his job is to peddle fantasy to young girls, it does make a certain amount of sense for him to be like this.
A good part of the introduction focuses on exploring this issue and the fallout from it as he reacts badly to it, not really understanding why that he has feelings for himself when it comes to Hatori. Mixed into it, we get some nice scenes that help to expand their back story with how they are together, but mostly it’s just nudging Chiaki down the path to understanding what it is he may really be feeling so that he can get closer to Hatori. Unfortunately, the show has a kind of forced feel to it, not the natural progressions we got with the previous set of characters, and it’s hard to believe that a mangaka like him would have as much free time as they show him having. That’s just a quibble though since you’re not meant to bring that much reality into the situation. Still, what I kept finding is that even as the two start to work out what their feelings are, it feels like we’ve been dropped into the show rather than introduced to it, and that leaves you feeling a little jarred by it all.
The problem I run into with the show is that the addition of Chiaki and Hatori ends up drawing things out. After investing in the first relationship over the first four episodes, shifting gears here took me out of that story and I never felt like I really connected with this one. While there are crossover moments to be had and connections to be made with the two couples since there are plenty of familiar faces in the mix, when it shifted to Chiaki’s story I ended up just kind of zoning out a bit as I never really felt anything for the two of them. Not that I was hugely invested in the original couple with Ritsu, but the time was there and the shift is jarring. Both stories do play out well enough over the course of the series but it really felt like they should have been separate seasons with some crossover material at times to bind the two of them together. With the way it unfolds, I became even less invested in Chiaki and Hatori’s story as time went on and that ended up dampening my interest in the other one.
Of course, the thing I keep coming back to with this show and others from this genre is just how the power dynamics play out. There’s such a strong and outward push by half of each couple combined with some meek and uncertain partners/potential partners that it can be fairly cringeworthy at times. When you have characters forcing themselves on the other because they know it’s what the other really wants even if they themselves aren’t sure, well, it’s going to be difficult for a lot of people to watch. Which is why this genre tends to not have a lot of crossover material and shows like Yuri on Ice that deals with same-sex couples work better for a wider audience. I do think shows like this are important, however, because if you only show the positive side of things and not the harder, drawn out, and problematic relationships and how they form you get a very distorted kind of view on relationships in general.
In Summary:
Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, better known as World’s Greatest Love, has some very strong things to work with as over the course of it, it offers a really great balance between the comedy and drama and the boys-love material. When it comes to the sexuality, it’s done in just the right way to not be over the top yet will draw in the female viewers. I’ve watch a lot of gradations of it over the years in both anime and manga form without any problems and a series like this looks to be a lot of fun and definitely worth checking out, though there are certainly issues to be had depending on your view of the power dynamics at play and what’s acceptable. But to pretend that these kinds of things don’t happen does a disservice to ourselves and others and watching and understanding how other relationships work, and that different things do appeal to different people, is important. This show leaves me conflicted in a lot of ways but there is some really good stuff to be had in here and some challenging as well, making it a series that doesn’t just spoon feed you sugary goodness.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Clean Openings, Clean Closings
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Funimation
Release Date: March 7th, 2017
MSRP: $59.99
Running Time: 650 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
