Anime

One of the hidden strengths of anime are its backgrounds and how just a simple shot can convey a setting or mood. Case in point, this shot from episode ten of Yamada-Kun To Lv999 No Koi Wo Suru:

This perfectly captures the feel of the city late at night. Darkness only broken by the artifical lights of the lamp posts, passing cars and shop windows. There are still plenty of people out, but they’re all on their way somewhere, nobody’s just hanging about. You can tell that the day’s heat hasn’t dissipated yet. No need for clock or caption to show what time this takes place. All of it shows just how odd it was for Yamada to show up at Akane’s apartment that night because he was worried for her. It immediately lends an intensity to the episode in a way that your average ‘your crush cares for you as you’re home alone sick with the flu’ just doesn’t have. The scene later in the episode, where he has to take her to the hospital in a taxi? I’ve been there.

An almost diametrically opposite mood is set in this scene from the same week’s Skip to Loafer episode, nine. It’s the Summer holidays and Mitsumi is back with her family, gotten out of bed late on her second day staying there, just munching on some water melon and letting her thoughts drift. As she eats her melon, she idly looks at her mother doing the dishes, before looking out of the window. There follows a series of landscape shots, with only the sound of her eating the melon for company. Again, it perfectly sets the mood. Haven’t we all had those moments of laziness, slowly waking up when you know there’s nothing that you need to do but relax?

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.

Fellas!

Are you a disgusting, fat slob that’s bullied every day by your school mates, your family, every two bit punk you meet on your way home when trying to help a girl escape from them?

Do you want the body of an athlete and the face of a male model instead? Help is on the way! One word can change your life forever: ISEKAI!

Yes, isekai. If you’re a hopeless nerd with an unattractive physique and people use that to bully you, there is hope. Get yourself a kindly grandfather who leaves you his home after he dies and then, when you’re in the pits of despair, hit your bathroom mirror so hard it reveals a door to a secret room. There you will find another door that leads to another world, which atmosphere is so powerful that spending less than a day there will transform you from has-been to he-man! Juast ask Tenjou Yuuya (pictured above), the protagonist of the far too longwinded titled Isekai de Cheat Skill o Te ni Shita Ore wa, Genjitsu Sekai o mo Musou Suru: Level Up wa Jinsei o Kaeta series of light novels, manga and now anime.

Yes, this is very much the sort of power fantasy where the ugly duckling bullied kid becomes a chadly swan and takes his rightful place among the elites. As with most of these stories, you get the impression that the real outrage is not that there’s a system in which some people can bully others but that it’s this particular person that gets bullied. That Yuuja’s reward for having been bullied is becoming a super stud through no effort of your own, with a bunch of neat isekai powers and items included as well, implies the system works. Just be patient and you too might receive super powers.

What saves it is that Tenjou isn’t out for revenge and still is the same kind person he was from before his transformation. Nor does he effortlessly lose his fear of the bullies that tormented him for so long. This is still a power fantasy, but one I can enjoy relatively guild free.

Edgelord has murderous fantasies about his class mates, especially about the most popular girl in his class.

And then he discovers she’s a egocentric, clumsy airhead who doesn’t know how to read the room and all his hatred and anger evaporates.

A loser protagonist discovering the class idol’s hidden imperfections is a staple of anime romcoms of course. What’s new is our protagonist being, well, an incel. The heroine having to prove her humanity so that the protagonist doesn’t murder her isn’t as sweet as “she’s actually very shy rather than cool and only he knows it”. It would be horrible to start a romantic comedy this way. Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu‘s setup therefore had me anxious. Luckily it turns out the protagonist, Ichikawa Kyoutarou, is not so much an incel as a chuuni. He has his fantasies but they feel as unrealistic as somebody who’s worried the dragon sealed away in his left hand will awaken. It helps that the anime doesn’t dwell on them.

The impression I got from this first episode was that there was more to Ichikawa’s obsession with Yamada Anna than her status as the prettiest girl in his class. It felt more personal; there were hints at a backstory that might explain it. for a start, he is much too protective of her. Twice this episode he did something self destructive to get her out of an unpleasant situation. You don’t do that for somebody you only started liking because you caught her eating crisps in the school library. He went from would-be killer to protector far too quickly.

We haven’t gotten much insights into Yamada so far. We don’t even know if she’s really the class idol Ichikawa thinks she is. She doesn’t seem to be that different with her friends than when he caught her alone. Has he just built her up in his head to be this amazing cool person? It will be interesting to see what the series will make of this, and some of the small hints that Yamada too had her eye on Ichikawa.