When it comes to romance one thing you must keep in mind is that appearances arent everything. Im not just talking about personalities either what I mean is that chances are that a hot guy youve seen before is actually WAY younger than you. Let me get one thing straight I knew all along that Hatsukoi Monster wasnt going to be good. The manga already isnt all that wellreceived and when I read a few chapters of it myself I found myself getting more bored with it than a lot of other shoujo manga Ive read. Just for the sake of writing a review though I ended up watching the anime adaptation and.... well youll understand when you read this review. Ladies and little boys who look like gentlemen heres my review of Hatsukoi Monster a.k.a. First Love Monster. Hatsukoi Monster follows a girl named Kaho Nikaidou who is from a rich family and moves to an apartment building at the start of high school. When she arrives she is almost hit by a truck and is saved by a handsome young man. As it turns out the young man Kanade Takahashi is living in the same apartment building as Kaho soon enough Kaho confesses her newfound feelings for him. Kanade accepts her confession.... only to reveal to her the next day that hes a fifth grader. From there a slightly chaotic story around their relationship forms. As you can see everything about the story of Hatsukoi Monster is clich even the fact that Kanade and two of his friends Tomu and Gin are elementary school students who look older I can easily name two other anime that do the same thing Recorder to Randoseru and Yoiko. However its the fact that all of the elementary school students who actually LOOK their age who are more mature than them even their friend Kazu that especially bugs me. Yes theyre young but these three behave the most immaturely out of everyone making poop jokes and other things like that honestly its kind of cringey. Speaking of jokes while a select few of them did manage to get me to grin a little bit none of them actually got me to laugh. This anime plays itself off like a parody but theres a right and a wrong way to do a parody this isnt the right way. As I mentioned before Kanade and his friends have got to be some of the cringiest characters in anime history and I wasnt really a fan of any of them. Ill give Kanade credit for one thing though he has said some pretty deep things throughout the series for a fifth grader. I still wasnt a fan of him though. I really didnt like Kaho either except for one scene in the last episode she spent the whole series as a wishywashy Mary Sue okay maybe not exactly a Mary Sue but the word just happened to come to my mind with something obviously wrong with her brain if shes going to stick to loving Kanade with that age difference and his extreme childishness. The rest of the cast comes out either bland or just plain annoying I will admit though I did kind of like Kazu at first. The voice acting was decent considering the fact that one of my favorite seiyuus Yui Horie is part of the cast and as the protagonist no less Too bad her voice couldnt save her character. The opening and ending themes Innocence and Kimi ni Sasageru Chinkonka both by Shouta Aoi were skippable yet not bad songs. Hatsukoi Monster does have one thing I can honestly praise though and that is its animation. This year Studio Deen gave us Konosuba and Havent You Heard? Im Sakamoto with the former getting a second season next year two favorable anime with good animation. Despite this one not turning out as well over all the animation quality manages to survive its bright and colorful and its overall pretty to look at. Unfortunately despite its few uppoints my overall opinion of Hatsukoi Monster was not a pretty one. If I were to recommend it at all itd be to someone who is looking for a clich only someone who has seen enough anime would be able to spot. Oh and someone who finds all kinds of poop jokes funny You cant forget the poop jokes