Tada Never Falls in Love sits in that annoying middle ground where it isn't bad enough to hate but isn't good enough to remember. You watch all thirteen episodes, you smile a few times, you appreciate the colors, and then you forget it exists three days later. That's the real tragedy here. Doga Kobo produced this thing in Spring 2018, and they gave it their standard glossy treatment, but the story plays like a checklist of every romance anime cliché from the last decade.
The premise hooks you just enough to waste your time. Mitsuyoshi Tada is this quiet photography nerd who doesn't understand love because his parents died in a car crash when he was little. He meets Teresa Wagner, a blonde foreign transfer student from the fake European country of Larsenburg, while he's taking pictures of cherry blossoms. She gets lost, he helps her, she ends up at his grandfather's coffee shop, and boom, she's living next door and joining his photography club. It's the kind of coincidence-heavy setup that makes you roll your eyes, but you stick around because the studio made Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun and you hope they've got some tricks left.
Why The Characters Feel Like Paper
Tada himself is a problem. He's got that dead-eyed stoic protagonist thing going on where he's supposedly deep but mostly just mumbles and takes photos. His whole deal is that he can't express emotions because of his childhood trauma, which is anime shorthand for "boring main character." You get flashes of personality when he's with his friends or his cat, but mostly he's just there to react to Teresa being cheerful. The show tries to give him an arc about learning to love and open up, but it happens so late in the series that it feels rushed and unearned.
Teresa isn't much better despite being the more interesting concept on paper. She's a princess hiding her identity to study abroad, she's obsessed with this terrible samurai show called Rainbow Shogun, and she's genuinely kind in a way that isn't completely annoying. But the writers don't know what to do with her beyond making her cute and foreign. Her internal conflict about having to return home to marry some guy named Charles should carry weight, but the show keeps cutting away to comedy bits about the photography club president trying to see naked women. It kills the mood every single time.
The side characters are where this thing really falls apart. You've got Kaoru Ijuuin, Tada's best friend who's supposed to be this ladies' man but comes off as desperate and weird. He's chasing after Alec Magritte, Teresa's bodyguard and roommate, and their dynamic is supposed to be funny because she's tough and he's soft. It gets old fast. Then there's Pin-senpai, the club president who's a total pervert but somehow doesn't recognize that his childhood friend Hinako is the model he's obsessed with. This running gag lasts the entire series and never gets a real payoff. You've also got Yamashita, who everyone calls "Dog" because he acts like a dog, and Tada's little sister Yui who exists to cook and worry. None of these people feel like real humans. They're props for jokes that weren't funny the first time.
The Pacing Is A Mess
For a show called Tada Never Falls in Love, you would expect the romance to be the main focus. You'd be wrong. The first eight episodes are almost pure slice-of-life comedy with occasional longing glances. Tada and Teresa hang out, they take photos, they watch Rainbow Shogun, but the actual romantic development moves at a glacial pace. Some people call this "slow burn" and say it's realistic, but that's just excuse-making for bad writing. Real slow burn builds tension. This just kills time with cat episodes and beach episodes and festival episodes that you've seen in fifty other anime.
Speaking of the cat, Nyanko Big gets an entire episode narrated from his perspective in episode three. It's weird and gimmicky and doesn't add anything to the story except to explain Tada's backstory in the laziest way possible. The cat has a girlfriend named Cherry and everything. It's cute, sure, but it's filler in a show that desperately needed to develop its main relationship. I saw some data that said viewers dropped off around episode six, and I get it. That's when you realize the status quo isn't changing anytime soon.
The romance finally kicks in during the last four episodes when Teresa has to go back to Larsenburg to fulfill her duty as a princess. Tada realizes he loves her, there's a dramatic airport scene, and he whisks her away from her arranged marriage to Charles. The ending tries to have it both ways where she becomes queen but also gets to be with Tada, which makes zero logistical sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. Apparently the Larsenburg monarchy just lets their ruler live in Japan part-time now. The emotional beats land okay because the voice actors do heavy lifting, but the logic falls apart under scrutiny.
Visuals And Sound Save The Day
If there's one thing you can't fault, it's the production value. Doga Kobo knows how to make a pretty anime, and Tada Never Falls in Love looks gorgeous when it wants to. The backgrounds are soft and painterly, perfect for a show about photography. They use lighting really well, especially in the coffee shop scenes where everything glows warm and inviting. When Teresa leaves for Europe, they switch to these cold blue color palettes that actually make you feel the sadness. It's obvious the directors cared about the visual language even if the writers didn't care about the plot.
The camera angles matter too, which fits the theme. There are these precise shots where you're looking through Tada's viewfinder, and you can tell someone on staff understood photography. The way they frame the cherry blossoms in the first episode is almost worth the price of admission alone. The character designs are pretty standard though. Teresa's blonde hair makes her stand out, but everyone else looks like they came from a template labeled "high school anime protagonist." Nothing wrong with it, just nothing special.
The music is a mixed bag. The opening song "Otomodachi Film" by Masayoshi Ooishi is catchy as hell and gets stuck in your head. It fits the springtime vibe perfectly. The ending theme "Love Song" by Manaka Iwami is sweet but forgettable. The background score does its job without being annoying, which is honestly the best you can hope for in a rom-com. There's this one recurring piano piece they use during emotional moments that works pretty well.
The Dub vs Sub War
Here's something weird about this show. Usually the Japanese sub is the definitive way to watch anime, but Tada Never Falls in Love has a surprisingly good English dub. Like, genuinely better than the original in some ways. The English voice actors add this natural flow and vernacular that makes the dialogue sound less stiff. Teresa's voice in Japanese is super high-pitched and grating after a while, but the English performance tones it down to something more believable.
On the flip side, some of the side characters sound worse in English. Kaoru's whole deal doesn't translate well, and Pin-senpai's pervy energy feels more cringe than funny in English. But for the main couple, I'd actually recommend the dub. That's rare for me to say. Most of the time dubs mess up the emotional intent, but here they might have improved it. Just don't watch the dub if you're sensitive to awkward comedy timing because some of the jokes land with a thud.
Why It Failed To Leave A Mark
Tada Never Falls in Love came out in Spring 2018 alongside Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, and that's honestly the biggest problem. Wotakoi did everything this show tried to do but better. It had adult characters with real jobs, it skipped the will-they-won't-they nonsense by starting with a established couple, and it was consistently funny. Tada Never Falls in Love looks like a high school project next to it. Even comparing it to Real Girl from the same season, Tada comes up short because at least Real Girl had the guts to be weird and ugly sometimes.
The anime community has a bad habit of accepting mediocre romance as long as it's "wholesome" or "relatable." That's how garbage like this gets a 7.5 on MyAnimeList. People see two characters blush at each other and call it good character development. They see pretty colors and call it great animation. The bar is so low for romance anime that a show just needs to avoid being offensive to get a passing grade. Tada Never Falls in Love never offends, but it also never challenges you or surprises you or makes you feel anything beyond mild contentment.
The Rainbow Shogun subplot is the perfect example of wasted potential. Teresa loves this cheesy samurai drama, and it's supposed to be the thing that bonds her with Tada because he gets into it too. They could have used this fake show-within-a-show to comment on media consumption or to draw parallels between the samurai's struggles and Tada's own emotional repression. Instead it's just a quirky trait. She likes the show because she's cute and foreign and that's what cute foreign girls do in anime. They like weird Japanese things. It's lazy shorthand for character depth.
What Works Despite Everything
Look, I don't hate this show. That's the frustrating part. When Tada finally breaks down and cries about his parents in the later episodes, it hits. When Teresa is trying her best to enjoy her limited time in Japan knowing she has to leave, you feel for her. The scene where they're taking photos during that hide-and-seek game in episode two is genuinely charming. There are moments where the writing rises above the clichés and shows you what could have been if they'd just tried harder.
The friendship between Teresa and Alec has some real meat to it too. Alec isn't just the stern bodyguard; she's got her own insecurities about protecting someone she cares about while knowing she can never truly be her equal. Their dynamic has layers that the main romance lacks. If the show had been about those two instead of Tada's bland self, it might have been something special.
And yeah, the cat is funny. Nyanko Big steals every scene he's in. The episode where he falls in love with the neighborhood cat Cherry is filler, but it's good filler. It has more personality than the main plot. That's probably the most damning thing I can say about Tada Never Falls in Love: the side stories about the cat are more compelling than the central romance.
The Verdict On Tada Never Falls In Love
If you're new to anime and haven't seen a hundred romance series already, Tada Never Falls in Love is a fine entry point. It's safe, it's easy to digest, and it won't challenge your expectations. The ending is happy, the characters are nice, and nothing truly bad happens. For some people that's exactly what they want after a long day. I get that.
But if you've been watching anime for a while, this is just going to feel like going through the motions. You've seen the transfer student trope before. You've seen the dead parents backstory. You've seen the cultural festival episode and the beach episode and the Christmas episode. Tada Never Falls in Love checks every box without checking any of them particularly well. It's the anime equivalent of a participation trophy.
Would I recommend it? Only if you're desperate for something light and you've already watched Toradora, Your Lie in April, Tsuki ga Kirei, and every other romance anime worth watching. It's not offensive enough to avoid, but it's not good enough to seek out. Watch it for the pretty colors, enjoy the cat, and then move on to something with actual teeth. Tada Never Falls in Love is the definition of a six out of ten anime that thinks it's an eight.
