Liar Liar – Season 1 Episode 1 Recap & Review

The King and the Lie

Episode 1 of Liar Liar starts by establishing the premise of the show with a speech by the highest-ranked student at Academy Island. Filled with an extreme sense of superiority and pride while undermining everyone around him, Hiroto’s speech effectively triggers almost every student attending the orientation program.

After the speech, Hiroto heads backstage and realizes the full extent of what he has just said and is terrified of the consequences that might come with it.

Academy Island is an institution funded by the Saionji Corporation with a highly advanced technology infrastructure. The institution has an important ranking system based on the number of stars earned by winning games. The highest ranking a student can achieve is 7 stars.

It’s Hiroto’s first day on the island and he bumps into Sarasa Sionji while searching for his academy building. On inquiry, Sarasa laughs at the fact that he’s in the wrong district and offers to walk him to the right one.

Sarasa doesn’t take him being a newbie seriously and just sees this as him creating an opportunity to talk to her. She pokes fun at him while briefing him about some of the basic know-how of the Academy Islands. She briefs him about how to use the device while flexing how higher-ranking students can check the details of lower-rankers.

However, on reaching District Four, she realizes she too has an orientation to attend and leaves. Just as she does, a water sprinkler blasts a jet of water at her, drenching her completely.

She instantly suspects that this is something plotted by Hiroto and thinks he is deliberately playing dumb to humiliate her. She hysterically bursts into flames and challenges him to a game, thinking defeating him will be the best revenge.

Not knowing anything about a game or how to play one, Hiroto accepts with the agreement that she will hear him out once it’s over.

Sarasa sets up the game request and the rules. She selects the restrictions generally applied by a lower-level student to give them an edge. The fact that Hiroto would use the facilities feels like an attempt to insult her.

She sets up a turn-based staring contest on hard mode. The rules of this game are similar to the ‘You laugh, you lose’ challenge, except this is hard mode and any expression can cost you the game. She uses her ability to reduce Hiroto’s time to 1/10th, which gives her an unfair advantage.

The game starts and it’s her chance to get Hiroto out of the game. Her device turns into a sword and she frantically tries to strike him and get a reaction. Hiroto is quick to dodge these attacks and survives the round expressionless.

As soon as it’s Hiroto’s chance, the water jet blasts again, drenching Sarasa completely. With a huge crowd gathered to watch the game, she gets completely embarrassed and starts wailing. This counts as an expression and Hiroto wins the match.

After the victory, Hiroto is instantly called by the headmistress. On arrival, he learns he has made a huge mistake breaking a precarious taboo. Sarasa Sionji, the girl he beat, was Masamune Sionji’s granddaughter, making her a VIP among VIPs. She was also a 7 star and ranked highest in the entrance exam grades.

The headmistress states the problem is that the news will spread that Sarasa lost to a 1-star student and that could upset Masamune Sionji. Hiroto could avoid that problem by using the red star to lie that he is a 7 star as well, which most likely won’t stir up any conflict.

After the Speech, Hiroto heads over to the dorm arranged by the headmistress. On the way, he encounters Sarasa in a dark alley as she is still trying to grasp why he is playing so dumb and why he wants to target her.

Sarasa is worried Hiroto as an inheritor of the Red Star, has already figured out that she isn’t the real Sarasa. However, he clarifies that he wasn’t deliberately doing so and he is a newbie. This means she only has herself to blame. The two agree that the lie will be kept secret and no one will get to know. Hiroto makes it to the dorm and is taken aback by how magnificent it is.

The Episode Review

Episode 1 of Liar Liar had a lot of catching up to do. This episode focuses on introducing all the rules and regulations of Academy Island. Life on the islands is all about competition, and this is manifested in the game and ranking system. Students on the islands can challenge each other to games, and a ranking system of stars is maintained. This comes with an endless number of games; too many rules and abilities which might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

In this episode, we are also introduced to the protagonist, Hiroto, a high school student who barely scraped through the entrance exams. We follow him through his early days on the island with a huge responsibility.

The animation of Liar Liar Episode 1 is nothing out of the world but adequate to make it enjoyable to watch. The audio tracks resemble those used in the early 2000s, except for the electronica used to increase the pace of heated scenes.

Overall, the anime has a decent look and feel but seems to be explaining more than what fans might look for in the limited time. The games entail too many rules which don’t aid the plot but are added only to make the process sound more complex. The plot still manages to keep viewers wondering what the next move will be and it has a decent audience retention potential.