Masamune-kun's Revenge

政宗くんのリベンジ (Masamune-kun no Revenge)

8.5(2)

OtakuDen

6.8(570,787)

MAL Score

Ranked #6277

Popularity #201

Comedy
Romance
Harem
School

Episodes: 12
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Jan 5, 2017 to Mar 23, 2017
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

As a child, Masamune Makabe was cruelly turned away by the wealthy and admired Aki Adagaki, who mocked his weight and saddled him with the nickname “Piggy.” Humiliated, he remade himself through relentless training, growing into a handsome—and decidedly self-absorbed—high schooler with a single goal: make Aki fall for him, then reject her in return.

Fate places him right back in her orbit when he transfers to Aki’s school. Masamune tries to get close to the so-called “Brutal Princess,” but his early efforts go embarrassingly off track. Just as his revenge finally starts to gain momentum, a mysterious letter arrives addressed to “Piggy,” threatening to unravel everything unless he can uncover who’s behind it.

Otaku Consensus

Masamune-kun's Revenge lands as a polished but divisive SILVER LINK. school rom-com: Mirai Minato's brisk direction, Michiko Yokote's gag-first pacing, and the clean translation of Tiv's character designs give the early revenge-game material an easy binge rhythm. Its MAL 6.75 and AniList 66 mirror the critical split: viewers who like harem-flavored romantic sparring find it light and funny, while the most common complaint is that its twists and emotional payoffs feel too predictable to justify deep investment.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Masamune-kun's Revenge if you want a rom-com built around pride, social performance, and petty psychological warfare without the emotional weight of a full drama. It scratches a nearby itch to Nisekoi's school-harem chaos and the ego-clashing side of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, but with a meaner self-improvement angle and more emphasis on image management. The appeal is not grand romance; it is watching attractive, status-conscious teenagers sabotage their own plans through vanity, embarrassment, and bad timing. SILVER LINK. keeps the episodes bright and quick, so the comedy rarely sits still, and the 12-episode length makes it easy to sample without committing to a long franchise entry. Best for viewers who enjoy tsundere friction, ojou-sama power dynamics, and rom-com schemes that collapse into farce.

Key Characters

M
Masamune Makabe
Masamune is memorable less as a flawless romantic lead than as a fitness-built ego project whose confidence constantly turns into comic self-exposure.
A
Aki Adagaki
Aki's fan-discussion hook is her 'Brutal Princess' persona, an ojou-sama archetype pushed toward sharp social dominance rather than simple rich-girl elegance.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
SILVER LINK. produced the 2017 TV adaptation as a compact 12-episode Winter season, giving it the snappy feel of a weekly romantic-comedy escalation rather than a slow-burn school drama.
2
Series composition is credited to Michiko Yokote, and the show reflects that by packaging romantic progress through short reversals, embarrassment beats, and sitcom-style momentum instead of lingering melodrama.
3
The visual identity is strongly tied to Tiv's original character design work, with Yuki Sawairi handling TV character design and Kaori Satou and Rie Furuya credited on sub-character design.
4
AniList's tag profile is unusually precise about its appeal: Male Protagonist at 93%, Revenge at 90%, Tsundere at 89%, Ojou-sama at 79%, and Fitness at 60%, marking it as a rom-com where body transformation and social status are part of the hook.
5
Its audience footprint is much larger than its critical reputation: MAL lists it at Popularity #201 with over 570,000 votes, while its rank sits far lower at #6261, making it a textbook widely sampled, hotly mixed rom-com.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The main credited production trio pairs director Mirai Minato with assistant director Keisuke Inoue and series composer Michiko Yokote, a setup that helps explain the show's emphasis on timing-heavy comedy and serialized romantic plotting.
Fun fact 2: The design pipeline was unusually well-specified in the credits provided: Tiv created the original character designs, Yuki Sawairi adapted them for animation, Kaori Satou and Rie Furuya handled sub-character design, and Shinpei Aoki and Mui Yamamoto are credited for prop design.
Fun fact 3: Critical commentary around the series often separates its premise from its execution: reviews call the revenge-romance angle an interesting twist, while repeatedly faulting the results as predictable or merely mediocre.
Fun fact 4: AniList records 3,296 favourites for the series despite its 66/100 score, showing that its core audience is smaller but more attached than the broad average rating suggests.
Fun fact 5: The harshest review excerpt in the research data targets Masamune-kun's Revenge R rather than the 2017 first season, which matters because the original season's reception is mixed-to-middling rather than uniformly hostile.