When people fall in love, they tend to try to make themselves more attractive for them. I mean, who cares about your personality or chemistry with someone when the other person thinks you're hot, right? Sarcasm aside, it's a little ironic that an anime movie could put such an emphasis on attractiveness and popularity when it isn't that popular itself. Why is that, though? Exactly what factors led to Kimi dake ni Motetainda being so unpopular that it didn't even get the English fansub treatment until nearly two years after its release? The desire to find answers to that question, as well as the character designs being done by Yamako from HoneyWorks, led me to watch it. Now that I have seen it....yeah, I can kind of see why it's not popular.
In the world of Kimi dake ni Motetainda, or "I Want To Be Popular Just For You" in English, there is a contest known as "The Handsome Competition". In this contest, attractive young men compete in groups of five to show off their appeal to adoring female fans in various ways, with the winning group receiving 10 million yen. One such group - consisting of Tokio Furuta, Shigekazu Ashida, Koutarou Tojima, Aki Sahashi, and Shun Gotouda - comes together when the wealthy Sakiko Horinomiya enlists their help in paying off a 5 million yen debt that resulted from a scam she seemed to fall for. (It should be mentioned that Tokio is reluctant to participate at first, but an accidental stain he creates on an expensive carpet coerces him to do so.) As the boys prepare for the competition - cleaning up their acts and all that - and make their way through it, they find themselves falling in love with Sakiko....somehow.
On the surface, the art looks pretty enough; Yamako did a pretty good job with the character designs, making each of the boys look as handsome as they should be. Then, we get into the actual animation, and....oh, boy. It's far from the worst animation I've ever seen, but the characters look off-model and just awkward overall at times. Well, the animation might not be the best, but at least the voice acting was decent enough. Most of the voice cast is full of experienced voice actors, such as Souma Saitou, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, and Yui Ishikawa, and they all do a solid job at their roles. The only exception to this is Rikiya Tomizono, who has done no voice acting work before or after his role as Koutarou, and his lack of experience in that department does lead to a lackluster performance; at least he still has his live-action acting career to fall back on. If I'm going to be honest, I thought that the Handsome Competition was going to be more of a standard idol competition, which makes it rather funny that "High School Princess", the ending theme sung by the main male leads, kind of sounds like an idol song. Not exactly a song that stands out too much among the other male idol songs, though.
The biggest problem with this movie, however, is its length. Within 54 minutes, it tries to tell a story that would benefit more from being a 12-episode series, and the end result is a horribly rushed plot. To give an example of what this short length affects, there's the romantic subplot, because of course there's a romantic subplot; there are enough guys involved for the female lead to have a reverse harem! Unfortunately, these more romantic parts aren't handled too well; when some of the guys admitted they had a thing for Sakiko, I was just thinking, "Wait, really? Since when?" See, if this movie was a series instead, there could have been more time to develop their relationships with her, making them actually seem like they might have chemistry with her. Out of the guys, Tokio seemed like he might have the most chemistry with Sakiko, but the movie doesn't allow for their relationship to be explored to where they could actually have chemistry. On a side note, the short length also affects the development of the characters themselves; we don't get to see why they are the way they are.
Despite all of my problems, though, I can't really say I found no enjoyment in Kimi dake ni Motetainda. With more polished animation and a longer length - preferably as a series rather than a movie - it could have potentially been a more enjoyable experience, as there were some parts of it that were quite amusing, such as Sakiko's naïveté. Give it a go if you want to watch something with hot guys, but I don't expect to see it becoming popular any time soon.
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