Anime Reviews (2010-2019): Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection (2012-2018)

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

“Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection” is highly recommended!

Click here to purchase this Blu-ray on Amazon

TITLE: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection

ANIME RELEASE DATE: 2012-2018

DURATION: Season 1-2, OVA and Two Movies

BLU-RAY INFORMATION: 1080p High Definition, English and Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 (movies are Japanese DTS-HD MA 5.1), Subtitles: English subtitles

COMPANY: Sentai Filmworks

RATING: TV 14 LD

Release Date: October 10, 2023

Original Creator: Torako

Original Character Design by Ousaka Nozomi

Director: Ishihara Tatsuya

Series Composition by Hanada Jukki

Music by Nijine

Character Design by Sagawa Haruka

Art Direction by Shinohara Mutsuo

Anime Production: Kyoto Animation

Featuring the following voice talent:

Fukuyama Jun/Leraldo Anzaldua as Togashi Yuta

Uchida Maaya/Margaret McDonald as Takanashi Rikka

Shitara Mami/Ashley Miller as Togashi Yumeha

Beth Lazarou as Yuta’s Mom

Uesaka Sumire/Brittney Karbowski as Dekomori Sanae

Inoue Kikuko/Carli Mosier asTsukumo Nanase

Asakura Azumi/Emily Neves as Tsuyuri Kumin

Sendai Eri/Genevieve Simmons as Takanashi Toka

Hoshi Soichiro/Greg Ayres as Isshiki Makoto

Akasaki Chinatsu/Maggie Flecknoe as Nibutani Shinka

Fukuhara Kaori/Monica Rial as Togashi Kuzuha

Some people hate standing out from the crowd. Others are desperate to, sometimes even living inside a fantasy of their own making where they have secret knowledge and hidden powers. This is “chunibyo”, a condition that Yuta Togashi lived with for several years. But he’s done with that now, and would be looking forward to his first year in high school… Except the girl who lives above him is still a chuni, and believes that Yuta’s her soul mate! And when Yuta’s previous “one true soul mate” comes back into his life with her own chuni version of reality, Yuta may just have to surrender to the inevitable in the complete mind-twisting, multi-series collection of LOVE, CHUNIBYO, AND OTHER DELUSIONS!

Chunibyo – A Japanese colloquial term typically used to describe early teens who have grandiose delusions, who desperately want to stand out, and who have convinced themselves that they have hidden knowledge or secret powers.

What happens when you have people who still have “Chunibyo” qualities as teenagers?

This is the theme of “Chunibyo demo Koi ga Shitai!” (Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!). A love story, an anime comedy but an anime that you can laugh but as you watch episode after episode, you can delve into it deeper and see how emotional trauma can also lead to such behavior.

The series is based on a Japanese light novel by Torako and illustrations by Osaka Nozomi. And it would win an honorable mention in the Kyoto Animation Award competition in 2010 and leading to a publication in June 2011 and lasted through 2017.

An anime series was released in 2012, followed by a second season titled “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions – Heart Throb-“, shorts, 2 OVA’s and two animated films have been released and are included in the Sentai Filmworks release of “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection”.

The film revolves around two main characters.

Togashi Yuta is the main narrator and he is a first year high school student who used to be a chunibyo that referred himself to as “Dark Flame Master” during junior high and alienated everyone due to it. But now he is trying to bury his past by enrolling in a high school far away to start a new chapter.

Takanashi Rikka is a person who lives above Yuta’s apartment and is a chunibyo and believes she has a “wicked eye” and thus she wears an eye patch over her right eye and wears bandages on her left arm. She believes her parasol is a weapon. Rikka became a chunibyo after the death of her father three years prior and she was supposed to live with her father’s family but decided to move in with her older sister, Toka (who is a chef and has had enough of her younger sister’s delusional antics). She was familiar with Yuta when he referred himself back then as a “Dark Flame Master”.

On the first day of high school, he sees Rikka and knows she has signs of “chunibyo syndrome” and escorts her to the school’s infirmary but she tells him that he is her soulmate.

While trying to forget his chunibyo past, he can’t help but feel he wants to help Rikka but also not knowing that the time they spend closer with each other, they begin to fall in love with each other.

Meanwhile, at school Rikka wants to start the “Far East Magical Society” but no one joins, thus the club is merged with another club with hardly any members, The Napping club started by a carefree girl named Kumin Tsuyuri.

Joining them in the club are Nibutani Shinka, a class rep and cheerleader. She is also a former chunibyo who went by the name of Morisummer and also had to choose a different high school to escape her past. She joins the club because she finds out that her spell book “Mabinogion” written while she was a chunibyo is under the posession of club member Sanae and desperately wants to retrieve it.

Dekomori Sanae is Rikka’s best friend. She has blonde twintails and she is an extreme chunibyo, but also top of her class and is very intelligent and comes from a very wealthy family She happens to own Nibutani’s spell book and doesn’t believe Nibutani is Morisummer.

Isshiki Makoto is Togashi’s classmate and joins to watch other girls in class. He joins the club and likes Kumin.

The first season of “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!” helps introduce each character but also the aim to have Takanshi Rikka grieve her father’s death and maybe this may be able to rid of her chunibyo tendencies. But also allowing viewers to see how the club was formed but also the growing relationship between Yuta and Rikka.

The second season “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions – Heart Throb-” kicks off with Rikka moving in with Yuta, as her sister has to move to another job. And the hijinks of how the others feel about the two living with each other and spying on them.

The animated film “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions the Movie: Takanashi Rikka Revision” was released after the first series and is a recap film told through the perspective of Rikka on how she met Yuta.

The second animated film “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take on Me” takes place during the third year of high school. Toka calls Yuta from Italy and tells him that she wants to bring Rikka to Italy once her career stabilizes. Yuta and Rikka at first think it was just during the break but they find out that Toka meant permanently. To prevent Rikka from moving, the friends come up with an idea that both Yuta and Rikka should elope. Will they go through with it?

VIDEO:

“Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection” is presented in 1080p High Definition and looks great in HD! The colors are vibrant and black levels are nice and deep. I didn’t notice any banding issues or compression during my viewing of the series.

AUDIO & SUBTITLES:

“Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection” is presented in Japanese and English DTS-HD MA 2.0 for the TV series and 5.1 for the animated film. For the series, both Japanese and English soundtracks are front-channel driven and was hoping that for a series with a lot of action, it would have received a 5.1 lossless soundtrack. But on its own, the series features crystal clear dialogue and music via the front channels. Both Japanese and English dub soundtracks are well-acted. The animated films sound wonderful in lossless HD.

Subtitles are in English.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

“Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collectios” comes with the clean opening and closing animations but what makes this Ultimate Collection so awesome is the inclusion of the Chuni Shorts, Chunibyo Lite Shorts, Kotatsu Photo Session Shorts and more!

When I first started watching “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!”, to be perfectly honest, I felt it was cute and interesting but lacking substance. But as the series progressed, I realized that the series was actually much more deeper than I expected.

I suppose my original thoughts was a group of people with or had chunibyo tendencies, but while watching, you realize this is a true love story and a friendship story that made the series much more interesting, captivating and enjoyable at the same time.

With the first season, while more introductory, you start to understand why Rikka became the way she is, but what happens when she let’s go of that persona. But you start to see in someway, that these two characters, Yuta and Rikka, to be together was destiny.

They are their own rock in trying to grow from whatever pain they had in their life. For Yuta, it’s more of understanding Rikka and wanting to be by her side, with Rikka, trying to process these feelings and trying to understand herself.

And of course, their friends who may be quirky but yet are by their side and each of them grow up.

By second season, you start to see the relationship of Yuta and Rikka tested and this last through the second animated film which becomes a fitting ending for the entire series.

If anything, I was quite impressed with the series as an overall package, from start to beginning because the stories are well-told, but also the planning of how they begin with each other and being together years later, I enjoyed that a lot.

Granted, it had me thinking a lot as well of how the series brings a character’s mental health into the equation and how these group of friends truly grow with each other, for the best, than taking on life alone and being misunderstood or shunned.

So, with the release of Sentai Filmwork’s “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection”, to be truthful, this is the best release to get. I wouldn’t suggest getting just one season, because “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!” is a series that is best experienced as a whole. It’s only two seasons with the two animated films and shorts, it makes for a wonderful Blu-ray collection.

You are literally getting your money’s worth with this ultimate collection!

Overall, “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Ultimate Collection” is highly recommended!

Click here to purchase this Blu-ray on Amazon