A Couple of Cuckoos is a rom-com anime aired in the Spring of 2022. It aired from April to October with the size of 24 beautifully made episodes, and it also has a nice touch of teenage humor to it, making it unique and different from the recent rom-com series’ that were released. Another wonderful anime made by Studio SynergySP, who have produced many classics like Initial D, Beyblade Metalfight, and Metal Fury.
The series is a good anime watch that is soothing and has a bit of comedy, making the series a bit happy. The characters confuse the storyline but show that “love is truly in the air.” Watch it with friends or your loved ones, but the soothing music in the background and the beautiful visuals will keep you stuck to your seats until you finish this anime; if you start it once, that is. You can watch it on Crunchyroll, but you must subscribe.
The Characters
Amano Erika: She is a child spoiled by the rich dad’s money and social media technology. She is kind and wants to be independent but does not know how, as no one has taught her before. She is also a famous Inusta (like Instagram in the anime) influencer and is almost recognized by all immediately. She is hyperactive and thinks impulsively, so she does not consider the other person’s feelings.
Hiro Segawa: She is a hardworking child from a family of priests. She is super competitive and did not have many friends until recently; she suddenly has two best friends. She is engaged to a mystery man at sixteen but wishes to have a normal life like any other teenager. She is also the school’s top performer for a long time and is looked up to by almost everyone.
Umino Nagi: The show’s main character is in love with three girls and is looking into marriage with one of them. This guy comes from a poor household and wishes to change that through sheer hard work by scoring good marks and becoming successful. He changes over time as he was stuck up before, and now he is a bit open-minded and accepts the erratic behavior of the other two girls (Amano Erika and Umino Sachi).
Umino Sachi: She is a sweet little sister to Amano Erika and Umino Nagi. She is kind but has the genes of a gangster (her parents), so she sometimes behaves in a rowdy way but only with her brother, making her character appealing—a mix of kindness and rowdiness.
The Plot
So, the storyline is slightly different from the rest of the rom-com we see. The story starts with two children born at the same time, on the same day, and in the same hospital. They get exchanged at birth between two families, resulting in the two kids growing up in different households with different wealth and cultures.
The kids switched at birth were Umino Nagi and Amano Erika, and they have lived opposite lifestyles. Amano Erika lived in a rich household as her exchange father was a hotel tycoon and a successful one. Umino Nagi was born into a household where the family owned a small diner. Umino Nagi’s parents were part of a gang before, but now they just wished to be parents as they had a change of heart.
For over sixteen years, these two lived in different households and had some oddities which even the families found peculiar. After sixteen years, their families get to know about the exchanged kids and decide to make it right but leave the final decisions to the kids themselves. The parents decide that kids meet up and then engage them as in Japan, kids can be married at the age of 16, so they engage them so that both families have their kids back to them and still have the kids they spent so many years with and have feelings for.
Now the two meet by chance just before officially meeting each other and try to set up a fake relationship with each other to fool their parents, only to know later that they were destined to meet each other and the families too. They later accepted their fate and started to meet each other to make their families believe so.
Then Amano Erika’s father sets them up in a separate home to live together for a couple of weeks to see their compatibility. This does not last for a couple of weeks. Though things happen, they are forced to live as both families have their problems to deal with.
Soon, we get to know that Umino Nagi has had a crush on a girl in his class for a long time, Segawa Hiro. She is the class’s topper and has been for a long time. Umino Nagi has promised himself that he will beat Segawa Hiro for becoming the first in class and then confessing to her his love. He can achieve it soon enough only to put his confession on hold.
Umino Nagi confessed to her, but his confession was put on hold as Segawa Hiro said that she had been the top performer ten more times than him, and so Nagi said he would score more than her ten more times, and then she shall date him. Then Segawa Hiro reveals that she is already engaged to someone and can not accept Umino Nagi’s love.
We then see another girl coming into the story, Umino Sachi. She has mixed feelings about her brother. She always had an elder brother complex since childhood for Umino Nagi, and when she learned that he was not her real brother, she started to have mixed feelings. This becomes worse when Nagi and Sachi accidentally kiss each other when a storm hits the house while they stay together with Erika.
Later on, we see many other characters being introduced into the series as supporting characters helping to develop the story and bringing some minor plots which make the story interesting and look forward to. Also, the love triangle develops between Amano Erika, Umino Nagi, and Segawa Hiro. It makes the plot a bit longer but interesting as they become best friends over the series and have feelings for each other.
Our Verdict
The series goes on for 24 episodes but gets repetitive after some time. The harem protagonist Umino Nagi is overrated to be real. In the series, he is pretty much like any other Harem protagonist but worse. He keeps getting girls, but they do not go out with him and have mixed feelings for him, and that changes as he starts acting in a kind manner to those girls.
The anime is followed by what is written in the manga and is true to it. The story has not been skipped or changed; the series has been made better, as the anime is so beautiful to watch no matter which episode you go to. All the episodes have been so beautifully animated that they will enchant you. Honestly, that is the only dedication you will get to the anime if you want to continue watching it.
The story is mixed so that you will not understand who likes whom. In each episode, you will see someone starting to like someone, but by the next episode, they start liking someone else. It is not even like they deny the older feelings; they suppress the old feelings and harbor new ones for the next one.
The fact that the Amano family is rich is understood; still, the fact that they let three kids live together for so long, take up their extravagant expenses, and do nothing to interrupt them is irritating. Also, the Umino family does not mind letting both their kids be given to some rich family and all the children living together and not giving any updates whatsoever or coming back to meet their parents even though they are just kids.
The anime has too many paths crossed and still does not have a proper conclusion about who will marry and who will like whom. They are all just living together and making up a storyline that seems like a harem rom-com but does not even come close to it.
The series concludes all the rom-com that have been released to date. The series focuses on all the scenes that a rom-com usually shows and has compiled them into one series. Not only that, all the scenes like a beach episode, summer festival, vacation house, confessions, going on camping, and so on have been covered in a span of just 24 episodes.
This series is very beautiful to look at, but at the same time, the story does not make sense or conclude at any given time. It makes no sense; the story does not connect or has no plot holes. The series makes a good one-time watch and is pretty enjoyable for a person just looking for time pass and a soothing anime with a bit of comedy.
Our Rating: ⭐ (3.2/5).
