Every Skip to Loafer review I’ve read uses this screenshot, so who am I to break a tradition?
It’s cute and it accurately captures the personalities of the two leads, which is why everybody has used it. Mitsumi is a book smart girl from the countryside, self confident until something goes wrong as it did here, while Shima is a good natured handsome boy, a golden retriever in human form to continue the animal metaphor. She is lost and confused, used to being a big fish (duck?) in a small pond, utterly defeated by the complexity of Tokyo’s public transport system. He on the other hand is just late because he got out of bed late, not too bothered by it. Infected with her urgency to get to the opening ceremony, the two race to school, just in time for the speech she has to hold as the representative of the first year students.
what I like about the original Skip to Loafer manga was that it isn’t just the Shima/Mitsuki show. There’s large supporting cast that isn’t just there to provide rival love interests and each of the two leads has long established friends made before they came to their new school. Seeing this established in this first episode of the anime version leaves me confident that the staff adapting it understand the manga well enough. It was mostly about the childhood friend and family Mitsuki left behind this time, but I really liked the scene with Shima and his group of middle school friends as shown above. It was casual, but it shows an understanding of how these groups work.
I also liked the anime version of Mitsuki’s aunt, Nao-chan. Anime doesn’t always have the best track record portraying queer, especially trans characters, but the show nailed it.
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