Mr Love: Queen’s Choice The Xmen Otome

Production

Look, let’s not beat around the bush, the production is bad. It’s just not very good. But it’s not bad as in they tried really hard and failed and wasted a huge amount of resources. It’s the other type of bad. I rarely call any anime bad. It makes me feel guilty for all the people that worked on it but let’s face it, this was a paycheck to MAPPA and nothing more. And it’s one of the worst MAPPA animes I have ever seen.

Let me clarify a bit. The animation is clunky and jagged. Low frame rate, awkward movements boring and minimal choreography. The voice acting sounds pleasantly phoned in and later on almost gleefully overacted. I’ll get to that when I talk about the story. And the music is dull and occasionally obstructive. The only redeeming quality is probably the character designs which are lifted straight from the game. They actually all look pretty good and consistent throughout the entire series but they all have one outfit. I’m saying that Mr Love: Queen’s Choice was clearly made by people who know how to make an anime and didn’t put too much effort into it. That’s all.

Story & Characters

So the story and characters are also bad. There’s very little way around it. But bad in a completely different way. Ok, so it’s a reverse harem based on a mobile otome. As you can imagine the main character is pleasantly bland and 176% pure man magnet. That doesn’t really matter. The draw of these types of anime are the mans being magnetized after all. So let me tell you a bit about our selection of dashing eligible bachelors!

First, they have one name in the subtitles, that matches the one in my game but the heroine is clearly saying something completely different and it annoyed me. This isn’t a Bam/Yoru situation where the name is also a word with plot significance so it gets translated. These are just one name and another completely different. You’ll see what I mean.

Let’s start with Gavin or Haku who is a special unit agent and the main character’s senpai from high school. He had a crush on her but they never got to resolve those feelings. What are the odds? Then we have Lucien or Simon (that one isn’t even localized) who is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, also super young and handsome, the man character’s neighbour and a guest on her show! We then have Victor or Zen. He’s not as bad in the anime but in the game, he’s a complete jerk. He is the young CEO of a huge company and all cold and efficient Mr. Grey type but he’s also a gourmet chef with his own restaurant that’s not very successful because he refuses to serve anyone that annoys him. And everyone annoys him. Finally, we have my favourite Kiro who for unknown reasons gets switched to Kira. He is an incredibly popular idol with a sweet tooth to match his sweet personality but also a secret all-powerful hacker.

Did I mention that they are also all super mutants so powerful that any one of them would be plot destroying in any other show? Like one can stop time at will, as often as he likes and decide exactly who and what it affects, another can command all those he looks at – Code Geass-like but without limitations. YAY!

If any of that sounded ridiculous to you, well you haven’t been paying attention. It’s all ridiculous. And these absolutely insane characters are brought together by a plot that starts out as a spunky young producer trying to save her show and ends with fighting a secret underground organization of mutants that want to mutate everyone in the world. You know, like Magneto. Only it’s also an otome so every other episode is about the heroine frolicking with one of the guys in some idyllic or exciting new setting.

It’s not so much that the plot has a few holes, it’s that the connective thread between those holes is actually pretty embroidery thread tied into a messy luck knot.

And I liked it.

I wouldn’t say I loved it. It got a bit too convoluted at times to be fun but it definitely dipped into the so bad it’s good category for me more than a few times. And I enjoyed watching all 12 episodes even while fully realizing this was objectively not a good show. I think that the actors caught on at some point because like I said, the performances went from harmless if a bit bored sounding to ecstatic. I figured as they read the script they started realizing: Oh it’s that kind of show and they went all in. Those are the best episodes!

You might like this anime if:

You enjoy so bad it’s good shows and haves a healthy appreciation for kitsch. You are honestly curious about what an Xmen otome would look like if it was way more otome than Xmen. You find any of the guys hot!

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.