Each anime season, however heavy everything else gets, in terms of what I’m watching, I do try to go with at least one romantic comedy anime. For the Winter 2020 season, the rom-com I went with was Science Fell In Love, so I Tried to Prove It.

In spite of the longwinded title, this show is not based on a Light Novel – and sadly nor does it have an abbreviated title, which makes it slightly awkward to talk about – not because of uncomfortable themes, but because the title is so damn long. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just call it Science Fell In Love.

The premise of Science Fell in Love follows a group of students at Saitama University, in an Information Science lab. When one of the students, a grad student named Ayame Himuro, confesses her feelings to fellow grad student Shinya Yukimura, Yukimura ends up getting flustered and suggests proving empirically that love exists.

Hilarity ensues from there, with each episode involving the two leads doing a romantic thing, whether it’s cooking dishes for each other, or doing a Kabe-don, or going on an actual date, but done in the context of a science experiment. During this, various other members of the lab will be roped into the experiment and end up commenting on how absurd this whole mess is. The most common commentator is Kotonoha Kanada – an undergrad researching the Travelling Salesman Problem, and who ends up being the main straight woman of the series.

Kanada is also one of our two sources of exposition on scientific concepts over the course of the series. The other is Rikekuma – a grumpy and generally onery mascot bear. The two will go on an interlude at various points in each episode to explain a scientific concept – from how to calculate the margin of error for a study, to control groups, to what particular kinds of research are – making the show actually somewhat educational.

As it is, the comedy in Science Fell In Love generally works, being absurdist and generally not-mean spirited. There are a couple of slightly homophobic jokes, which are unfortunate. However, the biggest fault with the show’s humor is that the humor works best on an episodic basis. If you watch a bunch of episodes back to back, the joke will get old very quickly, because they’re all variations on a theme. I came into the show two episodes in and had to stop and take a break after the start of episode 2 because the jokes in the basic premise were falling flat. Coming back the next day, all of the humor landed much better. Consequently, if you watch the show, I recommend you pace yourself.

Science Fell In Love is currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll, and it’s one of their new shows with a Crunchyroll exclusive dub if that’s your thing.