Science Fell in Love So I Tried to Prove It is a charming rom-com anime series that is due to return in the Spring 2022 anime season, and anime fans stand to learn a lot from this charming edutainment anime series. Similar to Dr. Stone and Cells at Work!, this anime can entertain viewers with charming characters and skits while also teaching them real-life science.
Protagonists Yukimura Shinya and Himuro Ayame both use real-life science to explain their experiments in the world of love, and they are happy to explain the inner workings of their theories and methods during an episode. To back them up, there's also the bonus character Rikekuma the science bear, a talking teddy bear who goes in-depth on a variety of topics in between scenes.
The Role Of Rikekuma The Science Bear
Rikekuma the science bear isn't a proper character in the series -- that is, Rikekuma never interacts with anyone else in the main cast of Science Fell in Love, and none of the main characters even acknowledge or seem to be aware of Rikekuma at all. Instead, this talking teddy bear is more like a mascot for the series who appears in between scenes to deliver lectures that would interrupt the pacing of an actual scene in Science Fell in Love. Rikekuma's main job is to deliver concise, detailed lectures on topics such as margins of error and the "traveling salesman" problem when the main characters cannot, and give Science Fell in Love fans more context for what Ayame and Shinya are talking about.
Rikekuma, however, doesn't seem too thrilled with any of this. Amusingly, this bonus character usually seems to be in a bad mood, and Rikekuma seems to scorn humans for their sloppy and careless ways. Rikekuma usually delivers its lectures with an air of impatience and reluctance, which creates contrast with the charming and easygoing main characters, who are more interested in doki-doki heart rates and kissing than lecturing anyone. Rikekuma is a foil to the lovestruck Ayame and her kuudere lab partner Shinya, which helps provide balance in the series and keep it more grounded with a new perspective. Ayame often has her head in the clouds, so the grouchy Rikekuma is there to keep the anime's tone in check, and deliver some hard science all the while. Oddly, Rikekuma has an adorable appearance as a talking teddy bear in glasses, and it might even dress up during its lectures, unaware of how much it can charm viewers despite its attitude. There's no character quite like Rikekuma the science bear.
Rikekuma's Best Science Lectures In The Anime
Rikekuma the science bear appears in several episodes of Science Fell in Love and expanded upon a variety of intriguing topics without sounding too dry about it. One of Rikekuma's most memorable lectures involves the "traveling salesman" problem, a scenario describing how a single party can visit a set number of cities once each while traveling the shortest possible distance before returning to the original city. This scenario is a matter of optimizing a vast set of data where many combinations or routes for a solution may exist. In some cases, it may be hopelessly difficult to find the truly optimal route, so a scientist or researcher may have to make do with a moderately efficient route, and sacrifice the possibility of the "perfect" route. In many fields of research, only the most accurate, efficient, and relevant data is desired, but even scientists have their limits, and in some scenarios, finding the "perfect" route simply won't happen. In Science Fell in Love, for example, Shinya and Ayame went on a date and intended to visit every attraction at the amusement park in the most efficient manner to keep their schedule, but that's easier said than done.
Rikekuma also delivered a lecture about the benefits of rounding, since many numbers in a scientific experiment or math problem are irrational numbers, with a patternless series of numbers stretching infinitely, such as 7.5827908264023148... and so on. Not even the most detail-oriented scientist would attempt a calculation with numbers like that, so scientists tend to round to a certain decimal place, such as the thousandths place. The irrational number given earlier, for example, could be rounded to 7.583, since the "7" after the "2" causes the 2 to become a 3, as the numbers 5-9 cause the previous one to go up.
Then, during the amusement park sequence in Science Fell in Love Episode 4, Rikekuma explained now "normalization" works when working with data. In that episode, Shinya and Ayame wanted to calculate which new pair of shoes was the optimal one to buy, with price being just one of several factors, along with fashion sense, functionality, and base preference. These factors and more can be measured in different ways or not at all, so it's important for the researcher to treat each factor the same way so they can be calculated together -- in this case, every factor for the shoes was given a value out of 100. Otherwise, the calculations would be a case of "apples to oranges."
