Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 13: Who Needs Reality?

Posted on by Karandi

Watching this episode I was impressed by how seriously the anime seemed to be taking the story and then we get the post credits scene and Tada Doesn’t Fall In Love officially takes the path of least resistance in the name of happy endings despite common sense.

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From a logical point of view it is very easy to be snarky about this final episode of Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love. And yet, the romance fan within me couldn’t help but be happy that they decided to forego reality and brought the two together at the very end. Of course, there’s no reason why it will work out for a happily ever after given Teresa is still a Princess. I mean, why does she no longer need a body guard? Who just lets the Princess of their country flit off unattended? While the anime also insinuates that Charles and Alec might get together, that seems equally unlikely given their relative stations so while it seems sweet and all, realistically it isn’t all that plausible.

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The ending was always going to make or break this story and to be honest, this ending makes this show a pretty standard romance in the vein of Roman Holiday. It has some smile worthy moments and a few moments that brings us tears, but ultimately, this final episode tells us that this anime is all just fairly standard. While it wants to deal with real human drama, it doesn’t want to do that at the expense of its feel good moments, and so we’ll get an ending that emotionally satisfies even as logic is completely ignored. Still, I had fun with this title this season and I’m glad I watched it through. I’ll get to a full season review soon.

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Karandi James

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 12: Who Stole Teresa’s Smile?

Posted on by Karandi

While this episode felt overly drawn out, the emotions being conveyed are very real. Tada and Teresa are both hurt by circumstance as truths are finally revealed in Episode 12 of Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love.

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After 11 episodes of watching Teresa smile and be exuberant about life, seeing her this episode was kind of painful as she is resigned to the life she knows she needs to live. her confrontation with Alex over her feelings for Charles, her discussion with Tada, and finally watching her cry in her bed are all fairly heartbreaking. And that’s what this episode did very well. it brought the emotion of the moment. We also see this with Tada as he leaves a little shell shocked and finally, finally, we see him cry.

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However, there’s a lot of downtime in this episode with the scene at the airport dragging on overly long, sightseeing through Larsenberg, and even the flashes to the crew in Japan, all just feel unnecessary to the story being constructed and made this episode feel overly long. It isn’t enough to stop this from being a pretty good episode, but it does stop it from being a great episode.

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Karandi James

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 11: Too Late

Posted on by Karandi

With Teresa’s disappearance, Tada finally realises that he fell in love with her. Be prepared for lots of anguished expressions from the usually stoic title character.

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There’s something wrong with Tada. He’s not taking photos, he’s messing up orders, he’s staring blankly at strangers. The usually unshakable character is definitely a little bit off. And the obvious reason is that Teresa has gone. While it takes most of the episode for this realisation to actually be admitted by Tada, it is obvious from the get-go and kind of cute the way it is depicted. That said, they certainly stretch this as far as it can go in terms of run time and by the end of the episode you just want the revelation so we can get on to the last stage of the story.

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That said, I’m not sure I buy the argument that he couldn’t have taken that picture of Teresa without being in love with her. That kind of implies you can’t take good pictures without falling in love and I don’t particularly like that idea. Still, this episode is mostly lovely and it is a great continuation of this story.

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Karandi James

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 10: Prepare For The Heart Break

Posted on by Karandi

Despite the rain clearing this episode, it feels like things have never been more cloudy as Tada and Teresa enjoy their ‘date’ before Tada gets quite a shock at the end of the episode.

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love continues to impress with its fairly reasonable handling of the central two characters. They both respond in most situations like fairly normal humans without the extreme anime tropes that so many characters might fall into. Certainly Teresa is similar to many a perky heroine in a love story, but she manages to keep her ebullient nature within the realm of reality, while Tada’s stoicism also feels convincing and is a nice counterpoint.

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The date makes for a perfect pivot point for this narrative and while there is nothing new or surprising in store for us, this is a narrative crafted in the full knowledge that it isn’t trying to break new ground, just trying to tell its story well. The end result is fairly satisfying this week and continues to build on the strengths of the series so far even as we turn toward the end.

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 9: It Isn’t Not Like That

Posted on by Karandi

Teresa perhaps made anime heroine history when she didn’t instantly declared ‘It’s Not Like That’ when Alex called her on being in love with Tada. This anime just continues to be a pretty solid and sweet romance.

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There’s no denying that mini-Teresa and Alex here are adorable and they both grew into fairly beautiful young girls. What I’m loving about this series is it doesn’t seem to be forcing melodrama for the sake of it. Alex asks Teresa point blank if she has fallen in love with Tada and Teresa admits it but also tells her not to worry because she’s going to return home and become Queen anyway. There’s more than enough drama in that situation without bringing in unnecessary complications. As a result, Teresa’s sudden awareness of how she is acting around Tada, and the stiff reactions she ends up with at school, seem very natural and add to an overall charm.

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But she’s also a teenage girl who has fallen in love for the first time. Despite rationally knowing what needs to happen, she’s still very much in love with Tada. That just leaves us with finding out exactly how he feels about her (though it is also pretty obvious) and then the either heartbreaking separation or the happily ever after depending on which way this anime chooses to go. And it really could go either way and be satisfying regardless. Looking forward to Tada and Teresa’s date next week.

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Karandi James

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 8: Love Under the Stars

Posted on by Karandi

With the club going to photograph stars this week we are prepared for star-crossed lovers to stare wistfully at each other. Problem being, not a lot else happens.

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This anime has done a lot of things right in building up its characters, particularly its support cast. Yet in is running into the problem of the main relationship having peaked fairly early. We know Teresa likes Tada, and even if Tada hasn’t admitted it, he likes her too. So when the anime focuses on them, really all it can do is go back over the same ground of Tada saying something that makes Teresa’s heart go doki-doki and then she’ll say something that makes Tada’s heart do the same. It is cute, but not exactly compelling viewing.

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With the definite end date looming over their relationship and the quite pointed comment at the shrine by Hinako that sometimes soul mate doesn’t mean someone to fall in love with but instead someone who will have a profound influence on you, it seems the final nail has been driven into the coffin of there actually being an ongoing romance between these two. While the anime might yet attempt to give us a final twist to allow these two to fall in love, that would fly in the face of the title and common sense at this point.

Despite that, the episode itself remains easy watching with a fun cast of characters who do not a lot but don’t really need to. Just hanging out with them is sufficient.

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 7: Capturing the Human Element

Posted on by Karandi

This week Tada manages to nail two character moments beautifully once again helping this anime remain feeling like it is just that little bit better than it should be.

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While the little sister’s crush on Yamashita seems to have come out of nowhere (unless I’ve just utterly and completely missed it in previous episodes), that didn’t stop this episode really hitting the mark. Over the course of twenty minutes, and once again with Nyanko Big acting as a story catalyst (though not narrator this time) we see the sister’s crush and what she likes about Yamashita before we see her hopes dashed in the face of the girl he has a crush on and then her dealing with a broken heart and sobbing to Teresa. While it might seem rushed, it really isn’t. Each part of this character arc feels complete. First love come and first broken heart all laid out cleanly for the audience.

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The fact that her story seems like a parallel for Charles, who is clearly in love with Teresa who doesn’t love him and he knows it, and quite possibly parallels Teresa’s crush on Tada which is most likely impossible due to circumstances, just makes this story more bitter sweet. And that brings us to the second moment this episode got right.

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Last week Charles was flawless and larger than life but this week we see him jogging in the park and stop to have a conversation with Nyanko Big. The whole talking to cats gag isn’t as interesting as it might look on paper, but Charles explaining to Nyanko Big that he fell in love with Teresa’s smile is a moment that feels very genuine, and Teresa’s smile is certainly something that you could imagine would win someone over.

While Tada Doesn’t Fall In Love isn’t exactly masterful, these moments that it gets right keep the story and characters going strong and buy good will for the less nuanced moments in the series.

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 6: No Surprises But Still Cute

Posted on by Karandi

If you were looking for something novel, this anime would be unimpressive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t super sweet to watch.

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The royal fiance has arrived and will of course need to meet all of Teresa’s new friends. He instantly charms each and every one of them and they have coffee together. The one interesting part about this segment is Tada’s reaction. Even his usual deadpan expression kind of wavers, though in his case it seems to be jealousy. Once again, I’m not sure when Teresa and Tada got so close, but we’re kind of just expected to accept that these two are crushing even though Tada’s not letting on and Teresa’s pretty determined she’s going home after her study tour.

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We are then sent to a party where all the friends are, though why I’m not sure, and clearly Teresa is there is a somewhat official capacity. however, instead of a royal reveal, we get treated to a sequence mirroring Tada and Teresa’s first meeting where they took shelter from the rain. It’s adorable but hardly mind blowing. However, I’m still wondering what the connection between the death of Tada’s parents and Teresa is, though it seems more and more clear there’s something going on.

All and all, this series kind of sticks to its consistent tone and delivery and remains elevated by the attention to detail in its settings.

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Karandi James

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 5: This Seems Anti-Climatic

Posted on by Karandi

So the anime shows us Tada’s parents leaving before the accident and reveals Teresa’s identity (is anyone shocked) and yet neither of these reveals feels like it has much weight. While this story continues to be pleasant, it really isn’t all that memorable. Your thoughts?

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Another school free episode and this time the focus switches to the anniversary of Tada’s parents’ deaths with his annoying friend attempting to cheer him up (not that Tada ever seems all that emotional about much of anything). Despite that being the episode focus, there seems to be far more moments focusing on Teresa smiling or the interactions between the others in the group than Tada himself.

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That isn’t really a problem because the cast are really pleasant and even with the fairly obvious development at the end of the episode this story remains pretty fun just to tune out and watch.  With some nice food shots, some reasonable cast interaction, and a visit to a bathhouse that only played a couple of the usual cliche moments, this episode was another fairly entertaining entry in an anime that isn’t exactly knocking my socks off but it is quite an enjoyable watch each week.

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Karandi James

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Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love Episode 4: It’s The Clark Kent Disguise

Posted on by Karandi

Another enjoyable episode even as nothing much of consequence occurs. This anime is managing feel good well enough and is novel enough to keep me wanting just a bit more without actually being all that memorable. How are you finding Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love?

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I’d kind of suspected the link between the Class Rep and the Idol, but hadn’t given it enough thought to really care but this episode focuses squarely on the relationship between Pin and the Class Rep and HINA.  While there are some really obvious moments early on in the episode where the anime seems desperate to ensure that no viewer has missed the potential connection with endless shots of the Class Rep reacting in ways that should make it apparent to anyone with a pulse what is going on, ultimately this episode ends up being pretty fun. Though, you do have to question the observational skills of Tada and friends.

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There’s a few laughs and a few emotionally touching moments and all and all the episode retains a general pleasantness that has so far permeated most of this anime. Though, I am starting to wonder how long they are going to delay the inevitable Tada/Teresa drama that is surely coming given Tada is the title character but since episode one has seemed fairly sidelined in his own show. I guess we’ll get to him eventually, though to say he didn’t at least get a moment this episode would be a lie. However, I’m not sure using your protagonist as the butt of a visual gag is really the way to get best mileage out of them.

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Anyway, I had fun with this episode and I’d love to know your thoughts on it so leave me a comment below.

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