Natsuo Maki is an elegant high school girl held high in esteem. She really wants a boyfriend, but doesn’t know how to get one, so she recruits Riko Kurahashi to help her. Riko is seen as boyish, just one of the guys, thereby making her a guru of sorts of the opposite sex. The problem is Riko has never had a boyfriend in her life, and Maki is also not the elegant girl she seems to be — she is, in fact, batshit insane. While struggling to conceal her unromantic background, Riko, along with some other girls, study up boyfriends and love in this love lab.
Non-sequitur and ridiculous humor can be hard to pull off, but Love Lab shows no problem with that. The comedy is pretty fast, but I never felt worn out by it as I do with some poor non-sequitur anime (see Idolm@ster or Cuticle Detective Inaba). Sometimes a screeching reaction to all the wackiness isn’t funny, and Love Lab seems to understand that, leaving Riko to grimace or mutter at Maki’s cluelessness sometimes. This is a well-paced comedy.
Visually, this is just excellent. The characters show great subtlety in their expressions. Every tilt of the head, raising of an eyebrow, narrowing of eyelids is animated. This anime also does some great bounce and stretch animation when the comedy really gets rolling.
And yes, I’m aware of some of the problematic aspects of Love Lab’s humor. There was one scene where an extremely racist joke was played out. I was sort of disappointed by that. Love Lab didn’t need such cheap humor, it was getting by just fine without that scene. Ugh.
Despite that, though, Love Lab is overall hilarious, definitely a good pick-me-up if you’ve had a bad day. Green light.
Love Lab is available from Sentai Filmworks and Crunchyroll.