Imagine if you will No Game No Life, but only the protagonist cheats instead of everyone exploiting the ten absolute rules of the world in creative, subtle and ingenious ways. Imagine No Game No Life where all the characters have been dumbed down to the level of morons just so the protagonist can appear smarter like in Classroom of the Elite. Imagine the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh where rules can be made up AND broken at any time. That’s Liar Liar. A convoluted mess of situational conveniences and contrivances.
Set on a fancy high-tech island academy (like Classroom of the Elite) where the students settle their disputes and differences by wagering stars on games (like season 1 Yu-Gi-Oh) in order to become… the best at games?… honestly, I don’t understand the point of this system or what benefits the students get for being the best at staring contests or racing. Our protag-kun beats the red-haired tsundere, who is also the best gamer at the academy and is also the daughter of someone rich and important, at a game, by accident, making him the best gamer. Now he has to pretend to be the best gamer by posing as a Lelouch vi Britainna type character so he doesn’t get found out for being a normal gamer and also so he doesn’t in trouble for reasons. It’s nonsense. Literal nonsense.
Why wouldn’t it be nonsense though? This is based on a light novel and as we all know 99.9% of light novel writers who focus on psychological thrillers and tense, dramatic, strategic play-by-plays can’t actually write about them with the plotting and skill needed in order to make something as intense, exciting and satisfying as early Death Note as an example. Liar Liar not only draws from the lazy “I knew you’d do that” style of writing which allows the writer to ass-pull solutions to problems out of nowhere without the need for a satisfying setup, Liar Liar introduces the concept of the red star which the protag-kun won after his game with tsundere. This star allows him to lie and see past lies… which is something only he can do… even though there's nothing stopping anyone else from opening their mouths and telling a lie or calling someone out for lying.
With this he and the hot maid he acquires cheat in every single game he participates in. And not by cleverly bending or exploiting the rules, I mean he literally cheats by hacking the school computer systems, sabotaging motorbikes, and whatever is necessary to win. There is no tension. No strategy. No epic gameplay. Just deflated balloons and wet party poppers. None of his opponents cheat by the way. He is the only one. Honestly, I wanted him to get caught. I liked his opponents. They’re the right level of weird, quirky and camp for a show like this, but they get done so dirty.
The lies don't stop with the games though as the main characters are constantly lying to each other about all sorts of things. By episode three I had basically given up on getting to know any of them because I felt like I didn’t know anything about them. When the big lie of episode three was revealed I didn’t even care. Why should I? That might be a lie too. The lies extend OUTSIDE the anime too. MAL has tagged this show as ecchi, but except for maybe one wet shirt scene there has been no ecchi content to get me through this trite.
Along with its poor art and animation Liar Liar truly has its pants on fire, but the pants are filled with doodoo faeces which gives off a strong scent of shit whilst they burn. Whilst I did enjoy some of the character interactions it is overall an anime trying to do too many things at once and succeeding at none of them. Poorly animated, poorly executed, poorly made. The story is so convoluted I’m not even sure I got most of the story explanation correct. Maybe I’m the Liar???
However, I’m not lying when I say this anime is fucking shit mate.
2/10 Bad
