Nisekoi

## Nisekoi *Nisekoi* ("False Love") is a wildly popular romantic comedy manga by Naoshi Komi, serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 2011 to 2016 across 229 chapters and 25 volumes. Built on the beloved fake-relationship trope — two rivals forced into a pretend romance — it is one of the defining harem romantic comedies of the 2010s, famous for its colorful cast of girls each holding a locket key, its infuriatingly extended romantic tension, and Komi's exceptionally appealing character designs. The manga received a highly successful anime adaptation from SHAFT (the studio behind *Monogatari*) in 2014–2015. Raku Ichijou is the son of a yakuza boss who wants nothing more than to lead a normal, peaceful high school life and eventually find the girl he made a childhood promise with — a girl he remembers only by a locket he keeps around his neck. The promise: when they reunite, she'll have the key that opens it. Into his carefully ordinary life crashes Chitoge Kirisaki — blonde, beautiful, and violent — the daughter of an American gangster whose family's gang is in a tense standoff with Raku's father's yakuza. To prevent an all-out gang war, the two families demand that Raku and Chitoge pretend to be a couple in love. The catch is that Raku is already in love with Onodera Kosaki — his sweet, gentle, perfect classmate who also happens to have a key to a locket. So begins *Nisekoi*'s core conceit: Raku navigating a fake relationship with Chitoge (whom he genuinely dislikes) while pining for Onodera (whom he's too shy to confess to), while additional girls with various keys to various lockets continue to enter his life. The manga is best understood as a love letter to the harem romcom genre's conventions — Komi is clearly having enormous fun with the form, and his artwork is consistently excellent. The mystery of which girl holds the "real" key drives the narrative forward for 25 volumes.