esmeralda63 - 2013-12-05 03:04:14

Love Lab was and is a very nice show. It's not the kind of show I ever envisioned myself watching when I first got into anime, but I'm glad I decided to broaden my horizons and try something different.

That sounded a lot like a conclusion, but I can assure you it's the intro. I know what I'm doing here.

Love Lab is a slice of life comedy about a group of middle-school girls who are fascinated with romance. In their efforts to prepare themselves for love, they establish a secret research club in a school that frowns upon romantic relationships. What follows is a thoroughly entertaining and amusing series filled with fun, laughter, and a few splashes of emotion.

We follow our main cast of five as they try [often with mixed results] to figure out what boys like and what it means to fall in love. First, we meet Riko, a tomboyish girl who, despite her outward appearance, is not as successful or confident as she puts on.

I think perhaps one of the themes in Love Lab is getting to know your true self and accepting who you are. Just as Riko acts differently on the outside, the highly respected and revered Student Council President, Maki, known for her unfaltering composure, grace and maturity, is not as stable as she seems. Riko quickly discovers a side to her that she keeps secret from everyone else, and this marks the beginning of their friendship.

The remaining three members of the main cast are Suzu, a typical shy girl who is the former Council secretary, Eno, a typical tsundere who is the former Council vice-president, and Sayo, who, unlike the previous two, has a little more depth by taking a slightly different spin on the "cold/emotionless girl" archetype.

Riko, Maki and Sayo are easily the most defined characters in the series, with Suzu and Eno getting little-to-no development. We learn more about the former three and see them change in subtle ways as the series progresses. It's a shame that Suzu and Eno didn't have the chance to grow, but there were other things happening that demanded the spotlight.

What are these things, you ask? Well, it's something that I very much love about Love Lab. The story! The fact that there is a story! It's not just five girls doing random things for thirteen episodes. There is a clear progression of events and most episodes end on an enticing cliff-hanger that makes you want more. I was pleasantly surprised by this, as I was not sure what to expect going in. What I got was a well-crafted story with small arcs that really come together to give a sense of realism and connectivity to the episodes and series as a whole.

And it's not just the fact that there was a story, and the story was decent, but Love Lab is consistently funny. I've found in the past that some humour doesn't come across that well from Japanese to English (subtitles, that is), and that some jokes just go over my head because of the culture differences. Well, not so in Love Lab!

Every episode, barring two that took a more serious tone in response to what was happening in the story, had me laughing out loud multiple times. The zany antics of the Student Council were really fun to watch. There were some great laughs had.

The animation and sound are both quite good. There was never a drop in the visual quality and the opening and ending both had a good charm to them. Sound-wise, I enjoyed the songs used and thought it was cool that all five of the main cast sung both the opening and ending. The background music was nice and often assisted the tone of the scene quite fittingly. The voice acting was good, but in Japanese, so I can't say much more, but when emotion needed to be conveyed, I felt it.

I really liked Love Lab. It is probably the funniest anime I have watched (take that as you will - at this stage I have only been watching anime for about eight months), and it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling when you watch it (haha, is this what moe feels like?). I really wanted to see the girls' endeavours succeed and for their hardships to be few and far between.

I honestly never thought I'd enjoy a show about (and probably aimed at) 14 year old girls quite this much. That doesn't make me any less of a man, right?

...

Right?

(I know it doesn't)

carolina.bernier - 2013-11-24 07:42:50

Edited: Because I'm terrible at writing, so hopefully its better overall.

With a new season incomes a shipment of slice of life anime that try to bring a breath of fresh air to the overused genre. I'm going to come right of the gate by saying that this anime is nothing superb. It does follow most of the rhetorical figures used in this genre with the highlighted moe-moe-moe moments along with common slapstick comedy. That does not make it bad. That makes this anime average to those who love slice of anime, like myself. Anyways, time to start the review. Love Lab, is the experiment a success or a failure?

Love Lab's story does not need much explanation because it does not take any risks from the moe, comedy, slice of life anime route. I will try to keep this succinct. Love Lab is a basic story of love and the struggles to obtain some. The way anime's plots starts is when two of female main characters, Riko and Maki, have an abrupt interaction with each other in the student council room. Maki is utterly embarassed due to what she was caught doing in that room, and tries to shut up Riko about the situation. Maki while in trying to shut up Riko, inadvertently, tells her about her desire for love. Riko being a good person becomes her mentor in love, and both of them create the Love Lab. From there the basic slice of life progression starts, and begins to get worse and worse.

As I mentioned before, this a basic slice of life anime. As the episodes progress we are introduced to other important female characters beyond Riko and Maki. Usually this is safest way to introduce characters and almost never fails. Almost being that this show has some pretty bland characters. All of the main female characters follow the archetype of a shy, timid girl. I do understand that it is there to emphasize the whole overarching concept of the story, but it taken to weird levels. What makes this worse is when we are introduced to them that its for their development. They do not progress anywhere from that point on, allowing all five of them are able to summed up in a short phrase: Maki: Sheltered-Princess, Riko: Love-Shy Coward, Eno: Brazen Closet-Romantic, Suzu: Timid, Sayo: Voice of Reason. This is a definite problem because this a genre that is created upon a strong character base. This was big problem for me and the series suffered because of it.

On the animation and sound side of things, Love Lab is pretty much standard fare. Its animation is average moe style animation with bright colors and cute girls. The soundtrack never had a truly outstanding track. The songs fit the backgrounds they were made for, but the tracks outside their backgrounds are not worth it. Despite what I said, I really liked the opening and ending. I mean really like them. I sometimes watched the opening twice before I even started the anime. Both of them are incredibly catchy, and I really enjoy it when all of the female voice actors harmonize when they sing. Apart from the opening and endings, the sound and animation of this anime was lackluster.

Is Love Lab the breakout slice of life, comedy the genre needs? Well, it is like many of the anime I review, its average. I believe that if this anime would have taken more risks with its character range and story, it can be what the slice of life genre needs to get back on its feet. Disappointingly it didn't and I shows in its overall bland posture and overtone. Nevertheless, Love Lab is an average anime with an average qualities giving it an average of 5.65/10

maggie.rodriguez - 2013-09-28 10:19:39

Summer 2013 was full of amazing shows, but one has come out ahead of the rest, and that is Love Lab. An amazing comedy about a group of high school girls who hang out after school to research techniques to attract love, Love Lab is full of amazing characters and astoundingly well animated.

Story

Love Lab revolves around the student council of Fuji Girl's Academy as they attempt to research what it is that makes a romantic interaction successful and how to get boyfriends. The story takes a more branching approach to a straight progression however, since as the show progresses the love research slows down a little as the girls meet new characters and resolve new conflicts. The love research is always present, but its predominance varies.

Love Lab is a very well written show, that keeps you engrossed for the entire episode every episode. The character development and internal struggles are especially well done, Riko's attempts to confess her lie being the predominant example.

Because of how well written the main story is, and how the character development overshadows even that, I give Love Lab a 9 out of 10 for Story.

Animation

Love Lab easily has the best art and animation of Summer 2013. The show makes excellent use of multiple art styles on the characters and very well done and beautiful settings to set the theme and feeling of each scene.

One of my favorite things is when they switch to a more comedic/chibi artstyle for a scene. It really adds hilarity to a few of the jokes, and changes the mood to however goofy the animators wanted it to be.

Another thing the animation team did that seems trivial but actually shows how much they care was Riko's hairstyle. It changes every day of school, and I don't think they ever repeated a style or hair-tie. Its quite a change from the usual anime where characters look the same forever, maybe to keep you from mixing them up with other characters. Riko is just so uniquely Riko that we don't need to worry about it. Changing her hair is just a cute little feature to throw in to show how good the team is, and even though its such a small thing I very much enjoyed it.

There are a lot of other things about the animation that make the show beautiful, eye catching, and at the same time flow amazingly well. I don't think I've seen an anime run as smoothly as this one.

Its because of the animation team going above and beyond on EVERY little thing that I give Love Lab a 10 out of 10 for animation.

Sound

There's a lot of different things that fit under sound, we'll start with the music. The OP specifically is really cute and fun, sang by a combination of all the girls from the student council in the show. One of my favorite parts is how the team released the OP single CD and had the OP sang by each individual girl. I think Riko and Eno versions sound the best personally, but all of them are good.

The background music for the show is such a natural fit that sometimes you don't even notice that it is playing. Some people would think this means it has bad music, but it doesn't. The music does exactly as music should do, it sets the mood without being invasive or grating. You can tell when a scene is supposed to be silly or happy or sad just by the music you sometimes don't even realise is playing.

Sound effects don't get too heavy use in a show like Love Lab. There's not a lot of fighting or running or other things that make action anime have such a wide array of effects. Even with as few effects as it has, they're still done well. Each sound effect is well placed, well synched with the animation, and there aren't any cliché anime sounds that take you out of the moment.

Love Lab earns a 10 out of 10 for Sound

Characters

All of the main student council characters in Love Lab are unique and lovable. Each has a different personality and is able to play off the others' personality to make scenes the best they can be.

Riko and Maki are a perfect pair, each complementing the other's personality to the point where jokes wouldn't be as good if it wasn't the two of them. Riko is less academically minded but has a lot of social experience, whereas Maki is incredibly smart academically but her appeared perfection has made her hard to approach and she can be awkward in social situations. The two form a powerful friendship very quickly and just as quickly become the stars of the show.

Suzu joins in a little while later, after Riko and Maki have already established who they are and how they work together. Suzu starts off incredibly shy and not as vocal as Riko and Maki, but this allows her to develop a lot as a character as the show goes on, becoming more and more confident in herself especially around her friends.

Suzu and Eno end up being regulars to the show shortly after Suzu. Eno is the quota tsundere character who has quirks that aren't dissimilar to Maki's but being more embarrassed about them. Sayo is probably the most normal character of the group, being not nearly as quirky as Maki and Eno as well as not nearly as gullible. She sees through Riko's lie pretty early on and tries to get her to come out about it, knowing the longer she waits the harder it will be.

The relationship between all the characters is as complex as it is friendly. Sayo especially, since her interactions with Riko are just as often conflict as they are friendly, and she's not afraid to speak up about other characters' (mostly Eno's) flaws and when they're acting silly.

All in all the entire group is irreplaceable to the show. Each one is able to supplement every other character, and the show would be incomplete without any one of them.

Love Lab earns a 10 out of 10 for its memorable and irreplaceable cast of characters.

Enjoyment

Summer 2013 was a tough competition. Some shows shone right out the gate, while some got better over time, and even others were doing splendidly right up until the last episode or two. Love Lab started strong, continued strong, and ended strong, and is my choice for AOTS.

The jokes are hilarious, the characters are lovable and unique, the animation is nearly flawless and always beautiful. Each episode was great, not a single one felt boring or bland compared to the others, each was filled with plenty of truly funny jokes and scenes.

Even though the sales aren't amazing, I really hope we can get a season 2 of Love Lab. I want to see more of these awesome characters.

I think its pretty obvious that I give Love Lab a 10 for enjoyment as well.

Overall

When the season began, Love Lab wasn't on my to-watch list. However, after I saw discussions and gifs and pictures of the first episode I was attracted by the animation. The smoothness of how everything flowed and the different styles for different scenes was interesting so I picked it up. From there it has been a hilarious and beautiful ride filled with some of the best characters summer has given us. Love Lab blew away my expectations in every way.

story: 9

animation: 10

sound: 10

character: 10

enjoyment: 10

average: 9.8