Mr Love: Queen’s Choice is Summer 2020's contribution to the nearly seasonal appearance of otome game adaptations, this time aiming to animate the mobile game of the same name. Unlike many other game adaptations, this one is available in English, with the cringe-inducing tagline in the Play store of “My superpower is my super love for you.” Although as of this writing I have not played the game, the anime version at least is nothing nearly as cheesy as that tagline would imply, featuring a fairly solid paranormal romance plot and a heroine who is much stronger than the norm.

The story follows an unnamed young woman as she sets out to revive her late father's paranormal mystery television program but finds herself sinking deeper and deeper into the strange realm of people known as “Evolvers.” They all have supernatural powers of some kind, and the name “Evolver” comes from the idea that they are representative of the next stage of human evolution, something that the villains of the piece, an organization called Black Swan, is looking to hasten. Black Swan has been gearing up for this for many years, and most of the main cast was exploited by them in childhood, letting us know just how long this has been in the works. Our heroine is no exception – in a vague similarity to Kyousuke Motomi's Queen's Quality, she's the eponymous much sought after queen who has to make choices throughout the story based on her ability to see the future, and naturally this means that she encountered all of the men in the story at some point during her childhood, whether that was at the shady facility Black Swan ran (or at least its current members ran; they may not have been “Black Swan” yet in the strictest sense), in her day to day life, or simply by going to school with them. It is through these relationships that Black Swan's agenda becomes clear.

While the four men who are clearly the romanceable options in the game all do slot nicely into the basic genre tropes – Jerk, Shady, Childhood Friend, Cute & Sweet – the anime does its best not to imply that any single one of them is the route being followed. The heroine has to work with each of them separately in order to fully piece together what's going on, and something that Kiro can do, Gavin can't. This also means that the story feels more like it has more forward momentum than many similar shows, which exhaust themselves trying to give an idea of each romantic interest's route. Everyone gets roughly the same amount of screen time, although Lucien, because of the nature of his role, does feel like he might have a little less. In terms of actual romantic content, Gavin and Kiro seem the closest to overtly liking the heroine, but viewers are generally left to form their own preferences without the heroine having any clearly stated. Instead she has to figure out how best to work with each of them, which in some cases involves proving that she's capable and in others just getting to know them as people.

She does not, however, rely upon any of the men to the exclusion of being able to do anything herself. As far as heroines go, she's much more proactive than most, and it isn't because she's got an overinflated idea of her own skill. She's actually very capable, and while she might wish someone would show up to save her, she never assumes that they will, doing her best to get through situations on her own. This is something that the men come to understand, and they rarely tell her to just stay put and be a good girl, instead actively involving her in the action of the story, and in the case of the finale, trusting that she's capable of finishing things herself. While she doesn't always dress appropriately for the job at hand – apparently she doesn't own pants and flat shoes – she does own a human amount of outfits as opposed to the one or two we typically see in anime, and she doesn't need any “defining” moments (cutting her hair, taking off her heels) before mustering the courage to spring into action: she just does it.

One oddity of the show, which is likely a direct result of the game being both available in English and having localized names, is that the subtitles use the English names from the game over the Japanese dub, meaning that what you hear is not what you see. Thus Shimon is Lucien, Zen is Victor, Haku is Gavin, and Kira is Kiro, which can cause a very odd, and at times annoying, disconnect. (Ditto on “Loveland,” which is just silly looking.) Fortunately this doesn't distract too much from the actual story, which, despite scattering across the heroine's interactions with four different male protagonists, doesn't feel too jumpy or disjointed. It does get increasingly so towards the end of the series, and there are still several things left unexplained when the final episode's credits roll, but this feels more like leaving room for a sequel than deliberately teasing viewers into playing the game.

Mr Love: Queen’s Choice is the best kind of surprise – a show that you go into with low expectations based on its origins and title but ends up being good. While it's still most likely to appeal to fans of reverse harem series and josei (or shoujo) titles, it manages to rise above some of its more trope-laden brethren, giving its characters personalities that go a bit beyond the standards and a heroine who is no one's damsel in distress. It isn't perfect, but if you've been avoiding it based solely on the title, it's worth checking out.