A Guilt Free Harem — Giji Harem — First Impressions

I like harem romcoms but is a bit of a guilty pleasure. It’s hardly mature to enjoy the idea of multiple cute girls (or boys) fighting over the protagonist, right? Not to mention that either you have to keep the battle going forever or somebody has to win and that always makes me feel sorry for the losing heroines. But what if you could have a guilt harem? A harem is which all the girls fighting over protag-kun are actually the same person:

Giji Harem (Pseudo-Harem) starts with Nanakura Rin, a first year high school student who likes acting and is looking for the school’s theatre club when she asks Kitahama Eiji, a second year for directions to the club room. He tells her he’s actually the club president but also the sole member of it, only to guide her to a room full of club members and the real president. She thinks he’s a bit weird but he must have made a good impression as after the opening has played, we see them sitting together as he complains about wanting a harem. Which is when Rin launches into her first persona, a devilish flirty girl, followed by tsundere-chan. For this she actually puts her hair into the traditional twin tails. More characters debut in the next few sketches, the quiet, capable but standoffish cool-chan and the big eyed, baby talking spoiled-chan. Apart from the pre-opening scene throughout these sketches we see that Rin and Eiji are already incredibly comfortable with each other, that Rin enjoys doing these skits as much as Eiji enjoys the flirting from all these characters.

In one of the stories this episode Rin has to actually choose which cooking is better between Eiji’s and another club member, who already won the club president’s vote. She’s very happy when the dish she prefers is indeed his, but gets embarassed when Eiji asks her to have spoiled-chan vote as well because now it’s a draw. The president then explains to the other member that’s just a little act Nanakura does sometimes. Just one of the hints dropped that their little play acting is noticed and recognised for what it is.

Rin needs an excellent voice actor to pull all these quick character switches off convincingly. Fortunately, Hayami Saori is more than up to the job. Her opposite number, Okamoto Nobuhiko is no slouch either. In a series that stands or falls with the quality of voice acting, to have the leads played by such distinguished veterans is excellent. I do feel sorry for whoever is doing the translating, having to get the flavour of Rin’s various personas into the subtitles. I had been a bit worried about how the animation would stack up compared to the manga, with the trailers not being that encouraging, but so far it has worked well.