So Liar Liar, the anime not the Jim Carrey movie, stars a character named Hiroto who just transferred to a school called Academy Island to look for an individual close to him. At this school everything is decided by games where the winner to take the spoils chosen prior to the start of the game as well as one star. For students the number of stars determines your rank and the strength of your abilities in the school and only one student can have the maximum of seven stars. Hiroto stumbles upon a victory on his first day and gains a unique red star which gives him an ability specific to that star which is to tell one lie. So Hiroto a one star student, due to spoiler reasons, lied and claimed to be the seven star and by proxy the strongest student in the academy. Now Hiroto must deal with every student coming after him while maintaining the lie at all times.

So the story is interesting because almost immediately Hiroto gets caught in a web of lies forcing him to use the coveted red star to lie about being the seven star student. However, while the challenges are great so is Hiroto’s wit and luckily also his resources. Though comrades helping Hiroto maintain the lie he is able to use a wide combination of his strategic mind, cheating from his comrades and subterfuge to circumvent the fact that while he claims to be a seven star he actually only has the resources of a one star. Another aspect of games is powers and each player has special powers but the more stars you have the better powers you get. Hiroto allegedly has the strongest powers due to his lie but sadly is functioning with the weakest which makes an additional obstacle in maintaining the lie. So as he is playing various games from people trying to take his top spot it’s amazing to see how he struggles but comes up with these insane off the wall strategies to gain the victory.

Though if I had to critic one aspect of the story it’s Hiroto’s motivation. His need to maintain the lie is so great his underlining goal for joining the academy gets so lost that I honestly forgot about it for most of the season till it’s brought up again in the very last lines of the last episode. I think it was brought up in episodes two and three but then goes about 10 episodes before you even hear of it again. Cleary this is something that will be more prevalent in later seasons but I wish we got more breadcrumbs here and there about this.

As far as the characters themselves they are kind of hit or miss to a degree. Hiroto is amazing as well as all of the major reoccurring characters as they are all incredibly intelligent, quick witty and capable individuals. It is the capabilities of these characters that makes the tension of the story so great as tides turn frequently in these games making it a nail bitter to see how they are going to end. However, any character not actively participating in the games is kind of forgettable as their roles are more to facilitate amazing things happening at Hiroto’s request or background characters that don’t appear for very long. Plus we don’t really see any character development from any of these individuals so they don’t change over time. So what I’m saying as a whole is that you’re entertainment value from these individuals comes entirely from what they can do as apposed to who they are. In this case it’s not a problem for me as I enjoyed watching the chaotic mind games but if you prefer a show where you’re invested in the characters this is not that kind of show.

Overall Liar Liar is an intense trilling anime that features very intelligent characters battling it out to become the strongest on Academy Island. Hiroto is forced to lie about being the strongest and maintain that lie by never loosing and doing so through witty strategies and clever resources helping him cheat. I haven’t felt this invested in the strategies of characters since Deathnote or Code Geass and no I’m not making a comparison as they firmly stand at the top in that area, but I haven’t seen any anime recently that entertained my love for intelligent characters like that till Liar Liar. However, where this show falls short is the lack of character development and the inability to get invested in these characters beyond their abilities and how they handle their obstacles. I’m pretty invested to watch season two but only because I want to see more of these off the wall winning strategies.