Literature / Oresuki

A "normal" harem.

Ore wo Suki Nano wa Omae Dake Ka Yo— translating to “Are You the Only One Who Loves Me?” and shortened to Oresuki—tells the story of Amatsuyu Kisaragi, AKA “Joro”. Joro is an average high school boy, kind and sincere, like a typical light novel protagonist, or at least that’s how he acts in hopes of attracting the attention of the girls he's interested in. Specifically, he’s trying to win the affections of Aoi Hinata, AKA “Himawari (Sunflower)” and/or Sakura Akino, AKA “Cosmos”. One day both girls sit alone with him on a bench to confess… that they’re in love with his best friend Taiyo Ooga AKA “Sun-chan”, and they want him to help them. While he’s reeling from this, he gets yet another surprise as Sumireko Sanshokuin AKA “Pansy”, the unattractive library girl with an annoying attitude, reveals that she, alone, is in love with him (and has been stalking him for some time). Thus begins a twisted romantic comedy filled with twists and turns, betrayals and manipulations.

Oresuki is a light novel series written by Rakuda and illustrated by Buriki, which were published from 2016 to 2022 for a total of 17 volumes. An anime adaptation produced by Connect (a subsidiary of SILVER LINK.) aired in 2019, with the series composition and episode scripts written by Rakuda. The anime’s OVA released in 2020, and is the last project that Connect would work on as an independent entity before being dissolved and absorbed back into its parent company.

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This series provides examples of:

• 12-Episode Anime: The anime adaptation takes twelve episodes to cover the story of the first four volumes and tells the fifth volume’s story in the OVA.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Part of Joro’s horrified reaction to getting a love confession from Pansy is because while she's not exactly plain, her personality and the way she toys with him means she may as well be ugly as sin. Even after learning about her hidden beauty, he still considers her this because she’s a creepy Stalker with a Crush, as the personality she had that turned him off in the first place is still there.
• Absurdly Youthful Mother: Joro’s mother Laurier is described as “forever 17” in her profile, even though that’s obviously not her actual age.
• Accent Relapse: Asunaro usually speaks in a formal manner, but slips into her natural Tsugaru dialect when in a state of high emotion, like when Joro suggests she could be one of the girls nominated for the Flower Dance or after Cosmos exposes her scheme to isolate Joro.
• Accidental Misnaming: Tampopo’s nickname is mispronounced as Ch＊npopo (Peenpopo in the English subs) by some students.
• Acting Unnatural: Cosmos and Himawari are horrible actors who can’t even approach “natural” when acting. Himawari ends up stiffly reciting any lines given to her, often stumbling and forgetting her lines or getting the timing wrong. Cosmos, on the other hand, invariably winds up acting like she’s an overdramatic samurai from a classic period drama.
• Actor Allusion: One of Tampopo’s Imagine Spots in episode 10 has Pansy singing lyrics from her voice actress’s song Orange Revolution.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The OVA adapts volume 5 of the light novels but includes brief appearances by characters who show up later.
  • Throughout the OVA, there are significant cameos by Ichika Botan aka Anemone, the girl who broke Sun-chan’s heart by asking him to matchmake her with Joro, introduced in volume 8. Most of her appearances are in Sun-chan’s flashbacks and her face is obscured in shadow, but she walks by him in the present day near the end.
  • When Joro is hiding from his harem, he seeks refuge behind a yakitori stand that has him repay them by helping sell skewers. The sister of the stand’s proprietor is Chifuyu Motoki aka Holly, Tsubaki’s childhood friend, who is formally introduced in volume 9.
• Adapted Out: Hose (and by extension, everyone from his school) do not appear in the manga.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Pansy specifies that her attraction to Joro is mainly focused on his rude, selfish Hyde persona. Just as Joro is an odd mix of Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Pansy somehow manages to combine this with Single Woman Seeks Good Man, as she also perceives a sense of care in him that even he’s not aware of and loves him for it just as much as she loves his nasty side.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Joro wants to get with either Cosmos or Himawari, who both want Sun-chan. Joro himself is the object of affection for Pansy, who Sun-chan happens to have a crush on. It only gets more complicated from there.
• Arc Villain: Although Joro thinks the Bench is the real Big Bad of the whole series, the story arcs often have a different character as the primary antagonist who’s causing relationship trouble for the main characters.
  • In the first arc, it’s Sun-chan.
  • The second arc’s villain is Asunaro.
  • Tsubaki is initially set up as the potential villain of the third story arc, but she’s a Red Herring and it ultimately has No Antagonist.
  • Hose is the closest thing the fourth arc has to an antagonist, with Tampopo as the Interim Villain at the beginning. Unlike the previous examples, he remains antagonistic and, given that he’s responsible for Pansy’s backstory, serves as the main villain of the series as a whole.
• Art Shift: Played for Laughs in the anime.
  • When Pansy confesses her love to Joro, his Oh, Crap! reaction has him looking like Art/{{The Scream|Munch}} by Edvard Munch.
  • Part of Joro’s Oh, Crap! reactions to Asunaro inviting him to the Bench includes a shift to the style of Kaiji.
  • When Joro and Sun-chan are drawn in a crude chibi style with Limited Animation, and Joro lampshades that it’s because the animators prioritized giving an Animation Bump to a fanservice scene with the girls immediately after.
• The Atoner:
  • Most of the main cast become this by the end of the first arc.
  • By the third arc, Sasanqua wants to atone for her mistreatment of Joro due to the rumors from the first two arcs. Doesn’t stop her from acting like a tsundere to him, though.
• Bad Liar: Cosmos and Himawari are very unconvincing liars, shown when they try to follow Joro’s matchmaker plans. Cosmos in particular tends to speak like an ancient samurai whenever she’s nervous or trying to hide something.
• Bait-and-Switch: A staple of the series.
  • The story sets itself up as a generic harem plot about an Ordinary High-School Student who has an Unwanted Harem in his childhood friend and his senpai on the student council. He’s actually a Manipulative Bastard Harem Seeker and gets roped into playing matchmaker for them and their real crush.
  • Most of the love confessions on the Bench make use of this. The first two look like straightforward confessions from a girl to the guy she likes, until she says she’s in love with his best friend. Joro expects/hopes for it to happen a third time when Pansy sits him down, only for the first two’s bait to switch out with a direct love confession to him.
• Beach Episode: Episode #7 gives an anime-exclusive pool story, and is even referred to by Pansy as an original swimsuit episode.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Joro is an aspiring Harem Seeker, but initially, his only available option for a girlfriend at first is his Stalker with a Crush Pansy. Pretty much every prospective love interest he finds thereafter is similarly manipulative or somehow troublesome to him, giving him a truly Unwanted Harem. Additionally, his own harem becomes the Spanner in the Works for his plan to keep Hose away from Pansy.
  • In episode 11, Joro mentions out loud that he wants someone to suddenly show up and help him to prevent the library from closing down. He immediately runs into Hose, a guy he talked to briefly in a previous episode. Though Hose does genuinely help them out, Pansy's reactions towards him suggests they had a past. She tells Joro that while Hose helped to squash the rumors about her, and was really in love with her. However, she hated how Hose unintentionally hurt others and also seemed to not realize it, such as the other two girls from his school being in love with him, doing Cannot Spit It Out for the sake of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy so they could at least move on with their lives in the event he rejected them.
• Bishie Sparkle: Happens to Hose numerous times, to the point that Joro starts getting blinded by it every time he sees it.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pretty much everyone to some degree.
  • Joro is an odd mix of this and Jerk with a Heart of Gold. His unpleasant Hyde persona is hidden from all except Pansy, but Pansy is able to see that for as selfish as he claims to be, a lot of Joro’s actions are motivated by a genuine care for others.
    • Even after reconciling with his friends, he still fantasizes about making the girls his harem and his internal monologue still calls Himawari a b＊tch on occasion.
  • Sun-chan is an even better example, pretending to be an Oblivious to Love Nice Guy as part of his plan to manipulate Joro, Cosmos, and Himawari for petty revenge on Joro.
  • Asunaro acts like she’s only trying to be Joro’s friend and atoning for the trouble she accidentally caused him, but the truth is that she’s a Clingy Jealous Girl who intentionally isolated him from his friends to have him all to herself.
  • Subverted with Tsubaki, who Joro immediately suspects of being one of these due to experience with the previous examples. She turns out to be exactly as kind and angelic as she seems, and the conflict in the arc she debuts in is primarily driven by Joro’s own insecurities that she helps him get through.
  • Tampopo is a barely disguised one. She tries to paint herself as a perfect angel, even though anyone with eyes can see how self-important she is.
  • Hose turns out to be an even bigger one than all of the previous examples, considering himself the main character who deserves Pansy and not giving a damn about stringing Cherry and Tsukimi along.
  • Shiba, one of Sun-chan’s baseball teammates, first befriended him when they were kids just to steal Sun-chan’s prized keychain out of resentment for the special treatment he seemed to get from their coach. This incident was Sun-chan’s Start of Darkness that led to him becoming a Stepford Smiler, and later befriending Joro when he saw that Joro also has a hidden dark side.
• Biting the Handkerchief: Tampopo does this twice, first when her first matchmaking plan goes nowhere and she gets subjected to Accidental Misnaming, and again when Joro figures out her ulterior motives.
• Book Dumb: Himawari and Sun-chan aren’t very academically apt and need tutoring to pass their tests. Sun-chan’s example is noteworthy because despite his grades, he’s psychologically savvy enough to be a Manipulative Bastard to Joro, Cosmos, and Himawari.
• Book Ends:
  • The first and last episodes of the anime end in the library with Joro agonizing over an inconvenient love confession he’s just received as the opening theme song “Papapa” plays.
  • Near the end of the OVA, there’s a Title Drop on the Bench involving Joro much like the end of the first episode.
• Boyfriend Bluff: When Joro fails to step up between Hose and Pansy, Sun-chan takes the opportunity to ask her out so she can get some breathing room from Hose. It’s implied that Sun-chan is indulging in the boyfriend role even though he knows she doesn’t return his feelings and he’s only a diversion until Joro can work up the nerve.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Tampopo’s reasons given for why she enlists Joro to help her set up Sun-chan and Pansy are 1. he sees Pansy in the library every day, 2. he’s Sun-chan’s best friend, and 3. Tampopo thinks Joro’s her slave. He quickly questions that last one.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Frequently in the anime, and usually by Joro.
• Bromantic Foil: The beginning sets up Sun-chan as this to Joro’s harem anime protagonist. Then the confessions happen and it turns out that Joro is the bromantic foil to Sun-chan’s harem protagonist. However, Sun-chan is revealed to have been playing with Cosmos and Himawari’s affections to get revenge on Joro. After the first arc, it’s double subverted.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Sasanqua always chokes and backs out whenever she tries to tell Joro how she feels.
• Cavalry Betrayal: The challenge Joro gives to Hose at the end of episode 12 involves which of them gets more barrettes from the girls, with the loser having to stay away from Pansy forever. Cosmos, Asunaro, and Himawari ask if they can give their barrettes right then and there, to which Joro agrees, limiting it to those 3 to avoid an obvious advantage on his part. Instead they give their barrettes to Hose, then tell Joro that while they care about Pansy's feelings, they're still in love with him, and hope he loses so he's up for grabs by them.
• Central Theme: There is no such thing as a side character. Everyone is the protagonist of their own life, and to diminish their importance is toxic for everyone.
  • At the beginning of the series, Joro thinks he’s the main character of a harem story and thus entitled to the affection of Cosmos and Himawari. Such a mindset leads to disappointment for him when they turn out to be more than just love interests. Sun-chan also disregarded their feelings and paid the price for it.
  • In the third arc, Joro’s perception of himself as a mere background character is what drives his actions. It takes a You Are Not Alone talk with Tsubaki for him to accept that he’s just as valued and important as his friends.
  • Hose has the same sense of entitlement that Joro used to, believing he’s the main character and should get Pansy’s love. Like Joro, this selfish way of thinking comes back to bite him.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The series alternates between playing the characters’ romantic troubles for laughs and drama, usually Cringe Comedy in regards to the former. Its overall perspective of romance likewise slides back and forth the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism between ruthlessly cynical (i.e. Teens Are Monsters in a Love Dodecahedron screwing each other over) and surprisingly optimistic (i.e. The Power of Friendship and forgiveness overcoming the conflict).
• Childhood Friend Romance: Joro wanted one with Himawari as an option for his harem plan, but her crush on Sun-chan pushes him into Unlucky Childhood Friend territory. The roles switch after the first arc concludes when Pansy reveals Sun-chan’s plans to try and screw over Joro for a past perceived slight.
  • There are a few other unlucky childhood friends besides them. Aside from Himawari’s crush on Sun-chan, Sun-chan’s Start of Darkness involves Anemone breaking his heart in middle school by asking him to matchmake her with Joro the same way Himawari would ask Joro. Then there’s Tsukimi being Hose’s childhood friend, and she continues to support his feelings for Pansy even after confessing to him.
• Chick Magnet: Double subverted with Joro. In the first episode, seems that Joro is this, but it turns out that the girls are in love with Sun-chan, not him. From the second arc on, Joro becomes a straight example.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • Cosmos acts like this. Sometimes the aura she lets out can be sensed by Joro if he’s nearby and getting a little too friendly with other girls.
  • Asunaro is one for Joro, to the point of isolating him from all his friends so they can be alone together. Even after this plan is foiled, she still looks pissed off when Tsubaki first transfers to their class and immediately gets friendly with Joro, including kissing him on the hand.
• Creepy Good: Cosmos has a few moments of this. Beneath the manipulations and stalking, Pansy also qualifies.
• Cringe Comedy: Usually at the expense of Joro.
• A Day in the Limelight: The OVA gives considerable focus to Sun-chan, elaborating on his past and how he came to befriend Joro, as well as his perspective on the baseball game that Joro’s competition with Hose hinges on.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The series deconstructs the typical characterization of a harem anime protagonist through Joro and Sun-chan. Namely, it shows that the Clueless Chick-Magnet the harem loves can actually be Obfuscating Stupidity and not as Oblivious to Love as they let on, in which case they’re probably a Manipulative Bastard who’s stringing the harem along for ulterior motives. In Joro’s case, the Ship Tease he perceives from his supposed harem turns out to be each of the girls being a Master of the Mixed Message, and he throws a tantrum about having to play Dogged Nice Guy who’s Entitled to Have You when he thinks they led him on, while Sun-chan has no problem using Cosmos and Himawari’s feelings for him to turn them against Joro. And then there’s Hose…
• Defeat Equals Friendship: The first couple of Arc Villains end up on friendlier terms with Joro after their plans are foiled, and even help him from time to time.
• Didn't See That Coming: A lot of the biggest wrenches in everyone’s plans is that they neglect to consider if the person they’re targeting already has a crush on someone else.
  • A particularly noteworthy example happens in the anime finale, when Joro’s plan to save Pansy from Hose is hampered by his failure to consider that three of the people he’s counting on to help him have become his legit harem at that point.
• Did You Think I Can't Feel?: Joro, after being accused of being an awful manipulator by Himawari and Cosmos, angrily points out that they were only using him to get closer to Sun-chan without any consideration about how he felt.
• Ditzy Genius: In contrast to the Book Dumb Himawari and Sun-chan, Cosmos is an ace student but very lacking in common sense, making bizarre decisions and theatrical gestures like giving thousands of problems to solve for an afternoon of tutoring and practicing every angle of her meticulous plan to apologize to Joro with a science dummy. And then there’s her talking like a samurai when she’s nervous.
• Dogged Nice Guy:
  • Joro at the start of the story to Cosmos and Himawari. Later on, it’s revealed that Sun-chan used to be this for Anemone, and his manipulating the situation in the present is revenge for how she preferred Joro.
  • In the fourth arc, it’s revealed that Hose being one for Pansy is what caused her to disguise herself.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening and ending give different examples.
  • The opening theme song, Papapa, is sung by Shuka Saitō, who voices Sasanqua.
  • The ending theme song, Hanakotoba, is performed by the voice actresses of Pansy, Cosmos, and Himawari. In the Recap Episode, Tampopo tries to join in on the singing only for Joro to shoot her down.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • By the time Sun-chan tells Joro that he’s crushing on Pansy, Joro and the audience already know that Pansy confessed to Joro.
  • Tampopo spends most of episode #10 believing that Sun-chan and Pansy have mutual feelings, and her plans to get them together involve positioning Joro as a Romantic False Lead to spur Sun-chan on. Joro reluctantly plays along despite knowing that Sun-chan’s crush is unrequited and Pansy is already in love with Joro himself.
• The Dreaded: The Bench, which always portends a love confession that will cause problems for Joro.
• Dumb Jock: Himawari and Sun-chan are both Book Dumb, and the former is on the tennis team while the latter is the school’s baseball star and he’s a better schemer than he is a test taker.
• Dysfunction Junction: It’s a story about Manipulative Bastards in a Love Dodecahedron trying to out gambit each other, so this trope is very much in play. Even after the main characters resolve most of their issues in the first arc, more dysfunction continues to arise around them.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • After what they did to him during the first arc, Joro had every right to be mad at Cosmos, Himawari, and Sun-chan, and cut them from his social life. Despite that however, he ends up forgiving them, and finds out that they were trying to figure out how to make it up to him in their own ways. Asunaro follows suit after getting chewed out at the end of the next arc, helping him out by collecting info and rumors relevant to the current crisis.
  • Joro holds no grudges to the Charisma Group for their bullying of him in the first arc, which is part of why Sasanqua falls for him.
• Entitled to Have You: Joro shows this early on, exploding in rage when alone over the fact that after all his work the two girls he’d tried to seduce instead fell for his best friend Sun-chan. Despite this, however, he willingly agrees to help them as best he can, only afterward getting angry and then rationalizing that once Sun-chan chose one he could get the other on the rebound. At the same time, it turns out that Sun-chan himself has this to a much larger degree. He’d done everything to win the heart of a girl in junior high, but she only got close to him to try and catch Joro’s attention in spite of Joro not doing anything at all. His fury over her refusal to love him for his efforts led him to take advantage of Himawari and Cosmos’ love to destroy their relationships with Joro, isolating him and hurting him in any way possible. And the biggest example of them all is Hose, who has the same “I’m the main character and get all the girls” mindset Joro used to have and thinks that entitles him to Pansy’s love even though he knows she doesn’t reciprocate.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Sasanqua, one of the gyaru girls who gave Joro grief due to the rumors about him, stops dyeing her hair in hopes of making a good impression when apologizing to him as well as becoming closer to his ideal.
• Fanservice: Like any harem anime worth its salt, parodic or not, the series has its fair share of this. The Beach Episode is an obvious example.
• First-Episode Twist: Joro’s prospective love interests are crushing on his best friend instead of him, Joro himself is an entitled Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and the only other person who actually loves him is a creepy Stalker with a Crush who knows all of this.
• First-Person Smartass: Joro is a big one, especially in the novels.
• Flat "What": Joro’s reaction to Cosmos confessing her love to him… for Sun-chan. Bonus points for his Gratuitous English.
• Flower Motifs: Each girl has a nickname of some flower based on the kanji in her name, and the boys’ nicknames relate to things that help growth in a flower garden. The girls’ nicknames can further be connected to Japan’s language of flowers, such as how the sunflower (Himawari) means radiance and passionate love, and Pansy means “My mind is filled with thoughts of you”.
• Floral Theme Naming: The female characters all have flower-themed nicknames derived from the kanji in their real names. Some of their real names also refer to flowers (i.e Cosmos’ real name, Sakura, means “cherry blossom”, while Pansy's real name, Sumireko, has the kanji for “violet”).
• Friendly Rivalry: When Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro give their simultaneous love confessions to Joro, Cosmos says that Pansy is both her friend as well as her rival (a sentiment that Himawari and Asunaro share as well), and Pansy takes it in stride. By extension, most of the girls in the library group are this to each other.
• Genki Girl: Himawari is extremely high-energy and almost always cheerful.
• Gift of the Magi Plot: The end of the third arc turns into one between Joro and Himawari, as Himawari ends up using the money she saved for a new tennis racket to buy a replacement for the Kokoro book Joro borrowed from Pansy, and Joro in turn buys that new racket for using the money he earned trying to replace the book.
• Glory Seeker: The reason Tampopo tries setting Sun-chan and Pansy up with each other is that she hopes it will improve Sun-chan’s mental state and baseball performance, and from there she can climb up to fame as the manager of that baseball team, though she has hidden motives besides this. She also envies Himawari and Cosmos for their popularity and thinks her plan will elevate her above them, somehow.
• Gratuitous English: In the anime, Joro is prone to throwing English in his sentences. Sasanqua’s friends and Tampopo do this as well.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In a Love Dodecahedron as screwed up as this one, plenty examples of this pop up. For a non-romantic example, Tampopo envies Himawari and Cosmos for their popularity, while Shiba’s resentment of Sun-chan is ultimately rooted in jealousy.
• Groin Attack: One doesn’t actually happen, but when a group of male students mistakenly say Tanpopo’s nickname is Peenpopo, she gets furious and tells Joro through his earpiece to bite off their peenpopos.
• Harem Nanny: Tsubaki, who fits the “cool as a cucumber” and “not above occasional flirting despite not being a love interest” criteria.
• Harem Seeker: Joro mainly just wants a girlfriend, but he’s also hoping his future may lead to a harem as he tries to seduce several girls at once.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: The third arc reveals that Joro feels insecure about how he measures up to his friends and his decision to get a job at Tsubaki’s family restaurant is an attempt to make something of himself.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Underneath the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, Joro is ultimately a kindhearted person who cares about others and will go to great lengths for them, even if he has genuinely selfish and underhanded ways of going about it.
• Hidden Buxom: Pansy binds her breasts to appear flat, despite being extremely well-endowed.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Although Joro wants a harem, he constantly rejects women’s attempts to flirt with him.
• History Repeats: Sun-chan attempts to invoke this against Joro for revenge, engineering a scenario where Joro has an unrequited Matchmaker Crush on girls who like his best friend, just like what Sun-chan did for Anemone when they were in middle school. Ironically, history ends up repeating even more closely than he anticipated, as Sun-chan’s current crush on Pansy is unrequited and her motivation for foiling his plan is that she’s in love with Joro.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: In an attempt to thoroughly crush his enemy with no hope of coming back Hose adds a condition to his and Joro’s contest that not only will the loser stay away from Pansy, but also all of Pansy’s friends, meaning Joro can’t talk to his library group if he loses. This comes back to bite him.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Joro, who aside from being a Harem Seeker also pays close attention to girls’ breasts and is easily roped into Tampopo’s plans by the promise of getting hot pics of her.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every chapter of the light novels and every episode of the anime has a first-person pronoun in the title (specifically in Japanese, they all start with “Ore,” but this doesn’t apply to all the titles’ English translations).
• I Have This Friend: Sasanqua uses this in the Beach Episode when asking Joro how she should approach apologizing to him.
• It's All About Me: Most characters fall into this from time to time, allowing themselves to say and do things without the slightest regard for others. However, in this regard, Tampopo takes the cake. She’s practically obsessed with her own supposed cuteness and a desire to make sure everyone is enamored with her and her alone.
• I'm Standing Right Here: When Pansy reveals to Tampopo that she’s in love with Joro, the two talk back and forth about it while repeatedly calling him “the Slipper Man” as if he’s not right next to them.
• In-Series Nickname/Only Known by Their Nickname: One could probably count on one hand how many times any of the cast’s real names are used. Once a new person is introduced, they’re given a nickname right away and are refered to by that name for the rest of the story.
• Internal Reveal: Two in the OVA. The first is that the Charisma Group learns that Pansy is the identity of the third beautiful girl who did the Flower Dance with Joro in the second arc. The second is that Sasanqua isn’t aware that she has serious competition for Joro until the OVA when Pansy casually reveals that she, Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro all confessed to him and are waiting for his answer.
• Ironic Echo: Some examples in the OVA.
  • After Joro and Hose’s competition ends, Joro confesses not only to Pansy, but also to Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro, each by mirroring the confessions they gave him when he created the competition.
  • An echo is made to the Title Drop from the end of the first episode. While that instance was Joro asking bitterly if Pansy is the only girl who has a crush on him, this instance is Sun-chan cherishing that Joro is his loyal best friend who will always be by his side throughout every rejection he gets.
• Irony: The story revels in this in so many ways. The biggest example is that Joro fancies himself a Manipulative Bastard scheming to become a harem anime protagonist, but the people he wanted in his harem asked him to matchmake them with their actual crush, and the people who already are interested in Joro happen to be much smarter Manipulative Bastards than he is, and they’re screwing with his plans.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • In the climax of the first arc, Pansy reveals that Joro’s actions playing matchmaker were all a platonic version of this for Sun-chan, as every effort he made was more in service of getting a girlfriend for Sun-chan than for himself. Hearing this from her sparks Joro’s Heel Realization.
  • The fourth arc has Cherry and Tsukimi asking Joro to help them matchmake Pansy and Hose because they’re in love with Hose themselves. In the OVA, Cosmos and Himawari get them to reconsider their stance on this, resulting in Cherry deciding to pursue Hose wholeheartedly and Tsukimi holding onto this mindset, though both confess their feelings to him.
  • Although Sun-chan is implied to enjoy indulging in his Boyfriend Bluff with Pansy, he does recognize that his feelings for her remain unrequited and gives some encouragement to her real object of affection to step up.
  • In the OVA, Tsubaki figures that Joro knew asking to Marry Them All would get rejected but did it anyway to preserve everyone’s friendships, as he knew that picking just one of the girls would risk driving them from each other.
• Jerkass at Your Discretion:
  • High school student Joro is an Ordinary High-School Student and Clueless Chick-Magnet who is close friends with both his Childhood Friend Himawari and Student Council President Cosmos, who make subtle passes at him which go over his head. One day, both girls ask him out on dates, where they confess that they're in love with Joro's best friend, Sun-chan. When Joro is out of vision and earshot of both girls, he reveals that the Oblivious to Love Nice Guy persona was all an act to get both girls to like him so that he could have a typical anime harem. Joro's real personality is closer to a Jerkass Japanese Delinquent with an extremely vindictive and manipulative streak.
  • Later, it's revealed that Joro's best friend, Sun-chan holds an intense grudge against Joro for unknowingly "stealing" the affection of a girl Sun-chan used to like in middle school. Sun-chan thus deliberately attempted to (and for a brief time, succeeded to) ruin Joro's relationship with both Himawari and Cosmos as revenge. Ironically, though, Sun-chan is foiled when another girl he has interest in, "Pansy", is again in love with Joro and thus creates and Engineered Public Confession that outs Sun-chan's plan to Joro, Himawari, and Cosmos. When he thinks no one's around, Sun-chan even threatens to rape Pansy for not returning his affection, until Joro appears and punches him out.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Just about everyone has some of this here and there. Himawari and Cosmos are prone to selfishness and can impose on Joro without really thinking of how it affects or inconveniences him; Pansy is a snarky, creepy woman who’d do anything for Joro’s happiness; Joro himself is an arrogant bastard trying to put on an act to get in the pants of several girls, but when he makes a promise he means it, he’d do anything for a friend, and he’d take on a guy five times as strong as him simply for laughing at a girl’s feelings.
• Large Ham:
  • Joro gets really hammy in his internal monologues, especially when he’s gloating about an evil plot.
  • Cosmos is excessively theatrical whenever her nerves get to her and make her act like a samurai.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the light novel and manga, the anime is much more easygoing at places. For instance, in the manga when Joro’s subjected to bullying, his shoes aren't decorated with cute designs, they're stuffed full of tacks; his desk isn't made into a model golf course, it's also covered in tacks or otherwise vandalized. He's kicked around when no one's looking, has toilet water dumped on him over bathroom stalls, and suffers in all sorts of ways.
• Loophole Abuse: The OVA shows each of the six girls who were given barrettes adding their own rule to Joro’s challenge with the specific intent of avoiding these. Despite that, there are some loopholes that both Joro and Hose end up exploiting when the rules are set, namely, that just because the contest ends when the last of the first six girls casts their vote doesn’t mean there can’t be other girls outside of those six who give barrettes before the last one is cast.
• Love Confession: Several, though this series uses a very loose definition of “love confession” that often means a confession pertaining to the matter of romance rather than a straightforward “I like you,” sort of confession, i.e. the person in question is being a Love Confessor. Most of these confessions happen on the Bench.
  • Cosmos and Himawari confessing to Joro that they’re in love with his best friend Sun-chan and asking him to wingman for them is what kicks off the plot. Pansy confessing her love to Joro after he was hoping/expecting for her to similarly say she likes Sun-chan is what prompts the title of the series.
  • When Pansy brings up to Joro that Sun-chan might already have feelings for someone else besides Cosmos and Himawari, he has to ask Sun-chan directly. Then Sun-chan takes Joro to the Bench to confess that he’s in love with Pansy.
  • The second arc begins with Asunaro seeming to give Joro a real love confession, only for her to shout that he’s a three-timing scumbag instead. Later in the arc, Cosmos manages to back Asunaro in a corner and pull a sincere Anguished Declaration of Love for Joro from her Motive Rant.
  • At the start of the fourth arc, Tampopo pulls Joro to the Bench to “confess” that she wants his help getting Sun-chan and Pansy together.
  • The last episode of the anime has Hose give one to Pansy, followed by Joro giving an implicit one to her in his Declaration of Protection. Not long after that Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro all give simultaneous love confessions to Joro when they explain why they gave the barrettes to Hose.
  • The OVA has its fair share as well:
    • In Sun-chan’s middle school flashbacks, we see him being told by his crush that she’s in love with Joro, the same way Cosmos and Himawari would tell Joro about their crushes on Sun-chan years later. It even happens on the Bench.
    • After being convinced by the words of Cosmos and Himawari, Cherry and Tsukimi come clean to Hose about their crushes on him (which he secretly already knew about). Afterwards, Cherry gives her barrette vote to Joro and Tsukimi gives hers to Hose.
    • Once the competition is over, Joro confesses his love to Pansy. Then he mirrors the confessions that Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro all gave to him and declares a Marry Them All scenario. He even offers Sasanqua to be his Friday girlfriend for good measure. None of them are happy about this.
• Love Dodecahedron: Played for Laughs. Joro initially tries to engineer a harem anime scenario for him to have Cosmos and Himawari, but they’re both in love with his best friend Sun-chan. Then Pansy reveals that she’s been stalking Joro and is in love with him herself. And when Joro asks Sun-chan who he’s crushing on, Sun-chan admits he’s got a thing for Pansy. The relationships among these five change over the course of the story, and the web grows more tangled with other characters having their own stakes in that drama.
• Love Epiphany:
  • Despite Pansy telling him repeatedly that she loves him, Joro doesn’t seem to care for that until Hose shows up and starts helping him with saving their library. He then has to come up with a plan so that Hose would leave her alone since Pansy didn't like him at all despite him being a Dogged Nice Guy.
  • Himawari and Cosmos both realize this after they overhear how Joro still tried to help them hook up with Sun-chan even though he also liked them. As they spend more time together, they both come to realize that they're in love with him after all, though he's moved on by that point.
  • At the pool, Sasanqua asks Joro about how to apologize to someone she’s wronged, with him apparently not realizing who she was at the time. When she takes his advice on apologizing sincerely, she then begins to realize she’s falling for him too after he said he didn’t hold any grudges against her.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: Joro announcing his plan at the end of episode 12 has the opening theme song playing to signify the victory he’s gloating about in his head, then abruptly stops when the Cavalry Betrayal happens. It plays again shortly after in the wake of Hose’s seeming victory and the supplanting of Joro as the main character, with Joro lamenting that even the theme song’s vocalist has betrayed him.
• Manipulative Bastard: Joro thinks he’s one of these, but he’s nowhere near as effective at it as the other examples in the story, who all wrap him around their fingers in varying degrees. The biggest example is Pansy herself, who manages to not only outwit Joro, but his friend Sun-chan, who manipulated everyone in order to isolate and torment Joro out of revenge for a past lost love.
• Marry Them All: Even after the first arc’s drama settles down, Joro is still hoping this is in the cards for him. In the OVA, he takes his shot after beating Hose and reciprocates every girls’ love confession to him. None of them are happy about his intent to date them all on alternating days and turn him down. Tsubaki figures that this was his roundabout way of trying to Dump Them All without rejecting them, so that they could preserve their friendships with each other instead of fighting over him.
• The Masochism Tango: Joro and Pansy have no problem spitting harsh words and snarky insults at each other, even though she’s upfront about the fact that she’s in love with him and he obviously cares about her very much.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Cosmos and Himawari both treat Joro very affectionately, so he expects them to have feelings for him like characters in a harem anime. As it turns out, they actually like his best friend, and revealing this does absolutely nothing to quell the strangely intimate way they interact with Joro, much to his frustration.
  • Sasanqua is the tsundere flavor of this trope.
• Matchmaker Crush: Played with in several bizarre ways for much comedy and drama. The beginning of the story has Joro agreeing to play matchmaker for two girls who he hoped would confess to him only for them to reveal their crushes on his best friend Sun-chan. After Sun-chan admits to Joro that he’s crushing on Pansy (who herself already confessed to Joro), he misinterprets Joro’s words and takes them to mean he should ask for help in getting Pansy’s attention, leading to him asking both Cosmos and Himawari to play matchmaker for him, though Sun-chan is more aware of their feelings for him than he lets on and is deliberately invoking this to get them mad at Joro. Cherry and Tsukimi are also trying to set up Pansy with Hose specifically because they’re in love with him and want him to be happy, though as Cosmos and Himawari later point out to them, this is an excuse to not be honest with their feelings.
• Meaningful Name: Or meaningful nicknames. As stated above, each girl is nicknamed after a flower, with possible significance in the flowers’ meanings in Japanese hanakotoba. Meanwhile, the boys are all nicknamed for things that help nourish flowers (“joro” [watering can], sun, hose…).
• Moment Killer:
  • The seemingly romantic atmospheres of Joro’s dates with Cosmos and Himawari shatter when they get to confessing to him who they really have a crush on.
  • In the Beach Episode, Joro lampshades that he and Pansy were having a tender bonding moment before she spoiled it by talking about her Stalker with a Crush antics leading her to his Porn Stash.
  • Immediately after his Love Confession to Pansy, Joro then proceeds to confess to Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro (plus Sasanqua), which gets all of them mad.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Cosmos and Himawari's expressions towards Joro at the end of Episode 3 shows that they are remorseful and embarrassed that they let Sun manipulate them to turn on him.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: When Pansy first undoes her school uniform and reveals her Hidden Buxom to Joro.
• Nice Guy: Tsubaki is seemingly the sole exception to the World of Jerkass that everyone else lives in, even if they do ultimately have good sides to them hidden under the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing they all wear to varying degrees.
• No Periods, Period: Played with. When Sasanqua chickens out of asking Joro on a date to an amusement park, the excuse she makes up to him is that a menopausal disorder kicked in early. She’s not actually going through that, but he’s obviously concerned for her when she says it.
• No Sense of Personal Space: At least where Joro’s concerned, Himawari has no limit. She regularly charges into him or wraps him in a tight, close embrace. This is part of the reason Joro continues to mentally call Himawari a “b*tch” even after they make amends.
• The Not-Love Interest: By the end of the OVA, it’s apparent that Joro is this to Sun-chan, being the most important person in his life, the one he looks up to and aspires to emulate, and his best friend who is by his side no matter how many other people he wants in his life reject him. He even lampshades it in his internal monologue, making an Ironic Echo to Joro’s Title Drop to Pansy in the first episode and thinking about how he wishes the person who loves him most was a cute girl he could date instead.
• Oblivious to Love: As a satire of harem stories, expect any example of this that appears to be subverted or somehow played with.
  • Joro paints himself as this at the beginning as part of his Nice Guy harem protagonist façade, but it turns out that not only is he fully aware of the signals he’s getting, but those signals are coming from girls who are both a Master of the Mixed Message and don’t actually have crushes on him like their behavior would indicate. The finale has him fall into this more than he realized, as he neglected to consider that three of the girls he’s counting on to vote in favor of Pansy being with him are in love with him themselves.
  • Sun-chan seems to be this, laughing off the awkward behavior Cosmos and Himawari have around him as just them being quirky and seeing no problem with asking them to play wingman for him and Pansy after Joro inspires him to pursue Pansy. Then it’s revealed that he is completely aware of Cosmos and Himawari crushing on him and deliberately broke their hearts with that request to screw over Joro.
  • According to Pansy, part of why she distances herself from her middle school friends is that she feels guilty over being the object of Hose’s affection while he remains oblivious to Cherry and Tsukimi’s feelings for him At the baseball game, it’s revealed that Hose is just as aware of Cherry and Tsukimi’s feelings for him as Sun-chan was, and he was similarly manipulating them for his own gain.
• Out-Gambitted: Happens several times and all over the place.
• The Power of Friendship: What ultimately solves the conflict in the first arc, and most conflicts thereafter, is not one Manipulative Bastard outsmarting another, but the fact that Joro and the others do legitimately value their friendships with one another and are willing to apologize and forgive each other and make amends when everything hits rock bottom.
• "Psycho" Strings: These strings can be heard at a few points, like when Cosmos is being creepy or when Tampopo abruptly pulls Joro into the science room.
• Real Men Eat Meat: Baseball ace Sun-chan has fried pork skewers as his Trademark Favorite Food.
• Recap Episode: The special episode released between #9 and #10 gives a recap of the story up to that point, with additional commentary by Joro and Tampopo. It also gives the audience a sense of Tampopo’s character (having briefly appeared in the cliffhanger at the end of #9) and some foreshadowing for later plot developments.
• Rescue Romance: Parodied. Asunaro fell in love with Joro because she thinks he protected her from getting hit by a foul ball during the baseball game. But from his perspective, he saw a pretty girl with huge boobs (Pansy) and was walking to her when a ball hit him in the head while he happened to be in front of Asunaro.
• Running Gag: Almost every time Joro hears a “love confession” that brings trouble to him, the person giving the confession asks him to sit down on a bench with them, and it’s always with the same words and the exact same kind of bench every time, no matter how improbable it would be for a bench to be there. By the time Pansy confesses to Joro, the Bench has become The Dreaded for him.
  • The stories everyone tells explaining the origins of their romantic feelings always trace back to the same baseball game the year prior, much to Joro’s consternation.
• Satire and Switch: The beginning of the series paints itself as a twisted take on the harem genre, with the main character being a manipulative jerk who wants to have a harem but finds himself the background character in someone else’s harem story, and the only person who’s into him is a creepy stalker. As the series goes on, the main characters’ dysfunctional relationships are largely resolved and more girls become legitimately interested in Joro, though it always retains a sense of self-awareness and the Dysfunction Junction hasn’t completely subsided.
• The Scream: Joro’s reaction to Pansy’s confession. He even does an Art Shift to the painting by Edvard Munch, with the Bench in the background.
• Sequel Hook: The end of episode 12 concludes on a cliffhanger, though before the episode ends Joro does a Breaking the Fourth Wall moment to announce an OVA in the works to conclude the story shown in the anime.
• She Cleans Up Nicely:
  • Pansy’s usual appearance puts her hair in braids, hides her eyes behind glasses, and suppresses her bust, but Joro is floored when she drops the façade she and stuns everyone at the Flower Dance when she dresses up. Joro later finds out she purposely did this to get away from Hose, a boy she went to middle school with and who was in love with her, but also unintentionally hurt their two female friends who are too scared to ask him out so instead just secretly holds their feelings inside.
  • Downplayed with Sasanqua as she wasn’t exactly unattractive in her Gyaru form but after she sheds it, Joro is taken aback by her beauty and doesn’t even recognize her immediately.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: By the time Tsubaki is introduced, Joro’s experiences in the first two arcs lead him to believe that Tsubaki is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing just like the others, and is immediately suspicious of her claim to have sworn her Undying Loyalty to him when she transferred into his class. Turns out, Tsubaki really is just as sweet and angelic as her too-good-to-be-true behavior suggests.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Sasanqua’s friends (the Charisma Crowd) are supportive of her getting with Joro.
  • Tampopo is one for Sun-chan × Pansy, and she conscripts Joro into helping her set them up.
  • Cherry and Tsukimi are this for Pansy × Hose, specifically because they’re in love with Hose and I Want My Beloved to Be Happy. First by trying to get the two alone together as much as possible, and later trying to recruit Joro, Cosmos, and Himawari to get the two together. However, all three flatly refuse.
• Shipper with an Agenda:
  • After Cosmos and Himawari turn out to be in love with Sun-chan instead of him, Joro reluctantly agrees to play matchmaker for the both of them. He then tries his hand at Xanatos Speed Chess and intends to seduce whichever girl Sun-chan doesn’t pick. Pansy is able to see that Joro has another, less selfish agenda than even he realizes, which is getting Sun-chan a girlfriend because I Want My Beloved to Be Happy, basically subverting this trope.
  • Ostensibly, Tampopo’s reason for wanting Sun-chan and Pansy together is to improve Sun-chan’s mental state and performance, since she’s the manager of his baseball team, though it quickly becomes clear that this is just a stepping stone that she hopes will bring her fame via the team’s success. Like Joro, she also turns out to have a hidden motive that is more selfless than she lets on, and it centers on getting Pansy a boyfriend to protect her from Hose.
    • Asunaro tags along with Tampopo’s plan because she thinks it’ll get Pansy out of the way between herself and Joro, but that doesn’t stop her from working with Joro and Pansy to call out Tampopo’s lies.
  • Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro all give their barrette votes in favor of Hose over who should Pansy be with because they’re in love with Joro themselves. That said, they still consider Pansy their friend (in a Friendly Rivalry way that she reciprocates) and refuse to let go of their friendship with her even when it’s revealed that the penalty has been altered so Joro can’t be with any of them if he loses unless they abandon Pansy.
  • Eventually, Cherry and Tsukimi are convinced to confess their feelings to Hose instead of hiding behind supporting his pursuit of Pansy as an excuse to not be honest with themselves. Afterwards, Cherry gives her barrette to Joro to affirm that she’d rather Hose be with her than with Pansy, while Tsukimi still wants Hose to be happy and gives him her barrette.
• Shout-Out: Plenty, especially in the anime.
  • After Cosmos and Himawari ask Joro to be their wingman, Joro’s tantrum evokes some Death Note imagery.
  • Joro’s The Scream reaction to Pansy’s confession is an Art Shift to the style of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” painting.
  • Pansy refers to Joro’s hidden nasty side as Hyde, and holds up a copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to make her point.
  • There's also Joro’s inward insult to Himawari when she hugged him, "B*tch, B*tcher, B*itchest!" which is a clear shout out to Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto's "Cool, Cooler, Coolest!"
  • By the third time the Bench appears, it’s accompanied by a leitmotif that blatantly rips off the Imperial March from Star Wars, complete with Darth Vader-style heavy breathing sounds in some instances.
  • When Asunaro invites Joro to the Bench with her, Joro’s Oh, Crap! reaction includes an Art Shift to the style of Kaiji.
  • In #8, Cherry describes the price of Pansy’s copy of Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki as 1/100,000th the cost of Shenmue.
  • The subtitle describing Laurier gives her age as “forever 17”^note Laurier’s VA Yukari Tamura is also a part of the forever 17 club.
  • Tampopo’s formal introduction to Joro takes a page from Sailor Moon.
  • While gushing about her plots to Joro and Asunaro, Tampopo makes Yuno Gasai’s infamous facial expression from the first episode of her anime.
  • When the group gathers to find a way to stop the library being shut down, it goes around the table with each person mentioning a group whose help they'll enlist. Joro's response when it's his turn? "I don't have many friends."
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: For as much of a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing as Joro is, the moments when his Hidden Heart of Gold underneath shines are what catch the affection of the girls who like him.
  • Pansy somehow blends this with All Girls Want Bad Boys, as she loves his hidden caring side just as much as she loves the nasty persona surrounding it. The only part of him she doesn’t like is the insincere Nice Guy he fabricates around that part of him.
  • Cosmos and Himawari were initially drawn to Sun-chan after they saw him break down in Manly Tears hidden from his teammates who he comforted following their loss in the baseball game. After Sun-chan’s true colors are revealed and Joro stands up for their feelings despite all of them having turned their backs on him, they begin to see Joro in a new light.
  • Asunaro’s case is explained under Rescue Romance.
  • Hose is a really nice guy and a helpful friend, and the object of Cherry and Tsukimi’s affections. However, they still love him even after his true colors as the biggest Bitch in Sheep's Clothing of the whole series is revealed.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: invoked Discussed in the Recap Episode. There were concerns that people would drop the show due to the slow pace of the first part of episode 1; the staff even wanted to toss this portion. Ultimately they sought to keep viewers’ attention with Fanservice, particularly panty shots.
• The Social Expert: Pansy’s skill for deducing everyone else’s feelings and motives stands far and above any other character’s, and it’s why she’s the most effective Manipulative Bastard of them all.
• Stalker with a Crush: Pansy openly admits to this, and proves frighteningly thorough in her stalking, always knowing far too much about things that happened to Joro. Asunaro is also one to him.
• Start of Darkness: The OVA explores Sun-chan’s, showing how he came to be a Stepford Smiler, how he befriended Joro, and how he began to envy Joro.
• Stepford Smiler: It’s revealed in the OVA that Sun-chan’s nickname and cheerful attitude were part of a mask he constructed to overcome his unpopularity.
• Student Council President: Cosmos is the head of the student council, which Joro is also part of. Cherry is the president of Toshobu’s student council.
• Spanner in the Works: With a cast full of Manipulative Bastards scheming against each other, one of them has to be the wrench in another’s plans for anyone to get Out-Gambitted.
  • In the first arc, Pansy is this to Sun-chan’s revenge against Joro.
  • In the second arc, Cosmos is the one who foils Asunaro’s plans.
  • Tampopo’s attempts to matchmake Pansy and Sun-chan never stood a chance to begin with, but what she really didn’t see coming was that Pansy was already in love with Joro and good enough friends with him for them to conspire together.
  • Joro’s plan in the last episode of the anime doesn’t quite achieve the instant victory he expected, because Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro would rather have Joro for themselves than lose him to Pansy.
  • Just when it seems that Joro’s been Out-Gambitted and Hose is about to get a landslide victory over him in their contest, Sun-chan steps in and evens up the score by both winning the baseball game and contacting all the girls in their school to give Joro barrettes just like Hose’s female schoolmates did.
• Supporting Harem: Though Joro consistently denies having any feelings for Pansy, it's pretty obvious that none of the other girls have a shot at him, though it doesn't stop them from trying a Love Confession anyway.
• Take a Third Option: When the girls compete in the Beach Episode to see who Joro has the most fun with, all of them botch their turns and he picks Sun-chan as the winner since Sun-chan always stepped in to fix their screwups.
• Tareme Eyes/Tsurime Eyes: Joro switches back and forth, depending on whether he's being honest or in "nice guy" mode. Very apparent in episode 3 when Pansy asks him to switch to his "Hyde" persona.
• Teens Are Monsters: Almost every conflict is caused by one of the teenage characters selfishly pursuing their own romantic interest at the expense of someone else. That being said, they’re not irredeemable monsters.
• The Tell:
  • Himawari’s tell (aside from her Acting Unnatural when trying to talk to Sun-chan in the first arc) is moving her eyes once to the right and twice to the left, something Joro picks up on.
  • Joro’s tell is pinching his fingers together and just like he can see Himawari’s tell, she can see his.
  • Cosmos has the most obvious tell of all, speaking like a grandiose samurai in a period drama whenever she’s trying to hide something.
• Tempting Fate: Joro confidently states to Tsubaki that “Whatever problem, I’ll solve it!” which then cuts to him looking like corpse due to Tampopo's request.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Joro starts out as a somewhat darker take on this trope, as he deliberately cultivated the image of an Oblivious to Love Nice Guy based on stories from the harem genre in order to acquire a harem of his own.
• Those Two Guys: Cherry and Tsukimi.
• Through His Stomach:
  • One of Joro’s incentives to keep visiting the library is the cookies Pansy bakes for him.
  • During the third arc, Cosmos tries to get closer to Joro by giving him food from a quadruple-packed lunch, but Tsubaki steals her thunder. She tries again with a quintuple-packed lunch, but Joro’s too preoccupied with looking for a job to notice.
• Title Drop: The first episode ends with Joro bitterly asking Pansy the title of the series, “Are you the only one who loves me?”
  • Near the end of the OVA, it’s said again, in a different context. This time, it’s Sun-chan bittersweetly asking to himself why no matter how many times a person rejects him (be it romantically or otherwise) Joro is always by his side.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • By the end of the confession arc, Joro, Cosmos, Himawari, and Sun-chan are all remorseful for the horrible things they’ve done to each other and are actively trying to be better friends. That said, Joro is still prone to calling Himawari a bitch in his head and still aspiring to make the girls his harem, even if he’s more appreciative of his friendships with them now.
  • Sasanqua and her Girl Posse stop bullying Joro after the rumors about him from the first two arcs are disproven and he accepts the apologies they give. From then on, she’s focused on trying to get closer to him and her friends are supporting her.
• Tsundere:
  • Joro becomes an odd one for Pansy, maintaining that he’s only attracted to her purely for her Hidden Buxom (plus the cookies she bakes him) and too repulsed by her abhorrent personality to consider her girlfriend material, but it’s often shown that he does care about her as a person far more than he wants to admit. Prior to her confession, it’s indicated that Pansy has always spoken to Joro with a sharp tongue, and this doesn’t let up one bit even after she starts peppering in explicit expressions of love for him, so she’s an example too.
  • Sasanqua is a more straightforward example to Joro, though mostly in denying that she likes him rather than hiding her feelings behind bullying. She’s actually less abusive to him as a tsundere than she was when she hated him and was genuinely bullying him. Her Image Song on the soundtrack is even titled Tsundelove.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Tsubaki is introduced by pledging hers to Joro in front of the whole class.
  • As it turns out, for all his failed manipulations and envy of them, Joro has this for all of his friends, especially his best friend Sun-chan.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: After the first arc, Joro has for the most part given up on trying to date Cosmos or Himawari (harem fantasies notwithstanding) and focuses more on being a better friend to them, while they get more Ship Tease implying growing feelings for him. Most of the signs they give are ambiguous given that the beginning established them as prone to sending mixed messages in how affectionate they are to him, but the love confessions they (and Asunaro) give him at the end of the anime throw the ambiguity out the window.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Played with. Joro is a shallow, selfish, manipulative Bitch in Sheep's Clothing whose hubris brings self-inflicted misfortune for him that he absolutely deserves, and this makes up about half the trouble he goes through. The other half of the trouble he encounters is largely undeserved and brought about by others, and it often strikes Joro when he’s trying to do the right thing.
• Unwanted Harem: Zig-zagged. Joro is a Harem Seeker so on paper the harem is far from unwanted. In practice, almost everyone with romantic interest in him shows it in a way that he finds troublesome, like Pansy being a Stalker with a Crush, or his own harem screwing over his plan to save Pansy from Hose.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the OVA, Hose has a truly glorious one when it turns out that Joro had the same idea as him to stuff the barrette vote in his favor, and when Pansy casts the tie-breaking vote with a love confession to Joro, followed by her definitively telling him to never approach her and her friends again.
• Wall Pin of Love: Played for laughs when Cosmos has this written down in her planner for how Joro reconciles with her. It comes back to bite Joro in the ass when Asunaro snaps a picture of it and presents it as evidence that he’s cheating with three girls.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: When Himawari takes Joro to the waterslide for her turn in the Beach Episode, Joro hopes to get an eyeful of a nip slip from her. A wardrobe malfunction does happen when they reach the end, but it’s not Himawari whose swimsuit flies off…
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • The first arc sees several of these exchanged between Joro and Himawari/Cosmos/Sun-chan.
  • Joro gets rather upset at Himawari after she uses her allowance she had been saving to buy a replacement book for Pansy instead of the tennis racket to replace her old one. Himawari gets confused by his anger and tearfully tells him she wanted to do something nice for him and because she felt partly responsible for the book getting damaged in the first place. Once he realizes he's being a Jerkass, he apologizes, and uses the money he intended for the book to buy Himawari her new tennis racket.
  • Pansy gives one of her own to Joro in the third arc.
• World of Jerkass: Initially, then subverted. The series can be described as, “Selfish, manipulative jerks in a Love Dodecahedron get the absolute worst out of each other, hit rock bottom, realize their friendships weren’t so fake after all, and decide to pick themselves up from there, but old habits die hard.”