Anime 55651 Tonikaku Kawaii Joshikou-hen Reviews Filter Check 3

Listen, I tried reeeaaal hard not to knock my head on a wall out of boredom while watching this. I’d already endured the rest of season two by that point, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. Thump… thump… went my head as I repetitively knocked it against a wall. As repetitively as how this anime is written.

Enervating, I believe, is the correct term for describing how mindlessly written Tonikaku Kawaii: Joshikou-hen or TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You – High School Days is. The series gaslights you into thinking it’s good with the first season, smacks you in the face with a boulder of ... boredom with the second, and then produces this ONA, a copy of the second season, only much weaker in delivery. Dry comedy, characters that’d perform better in a puppet show, and agonizing repetition. Oh, man, is it frustrating to be fed the same shit ad nauseam.

For those who don’t already understand why this thing is a waste of time, I’ll provide a short synopsis:
Yuzaki Nasa starts teaching at an all-girl’s school and gets along pretty well with the students, meanwhile one particular student(?) at the school whom the others refer to as “Princess” is supposedly as smart as Nasa. Besides that, you’ve got a replica of season two, with an even more terribly-written mystery. How much can they milk out of this series??

I’m 90% sure the main reason people stayed till this point of the series is because “OoOHh lOoK! A GenUiNE mArRiED CoUpLE, Oh mY FUCkINg GoD!!” as if that single quality makes everything ten times better. No. No, it doesn’t. What’s so different about a romcom with a married couple? That they live together? That they get more intimate? Really, so this passes as good romance anime now?

Besides the whole married couple craze, this is basically your everyday slice-of-life romcom, just with terrible comedy. The thing is, slice-of-life anime like this heavily relies on its characters and how they’re written, designed, what their personalities are, etc. Unfortunately, Nasa and Tsukasa here are less than amusing or interesting and the side characters are comically… bad.

They tried to make this ONA somewhat interesting with the character Gekkou Kaguya, the student who is referred to as “Princess” by others. The thing that’s funny about her is that she’s presented in a way that suggests she’s some mysterious antagonist or something. She’s got dark clothing with a mask concealing her lower face, like some cyberpunk-ninja or whatever. Why??? If the writer intended Kaguya to be some sort of mysterious enemy, they could’ve designed and written her a lot better; she’s waaayyy too overexaggerated. She’s like that anyway, probably as a last-ditch effort to pull this whole thing out of the depths of the Boredom River.

Now, I might be really wrong about Kaguya. What if she turns out to be the final boss that Nasa and Tsukasa must fight against using their love? That could totally happen in a later season. For all I care, though, this is the last piece of Tonikaku Kawaii media I’ll be consuming, so I won’t really know what happens with her.

The romantic dilemmas were another failed attempt at making this less generic. Except the dilemmas are overused tropes, ultimately resulting in the ONA becoming more generic and your brain beginning to short-circuit. Man, don’t you love it when anime tries to make itself unique by not making itself unique? I know I don’t.

It's time for more insult to injury!!!! This time the ONA had a good setting to work with, unlike with season two. Nasa teaches at an all-girls school and Gekkou Kaguya is the mysterious character! This should be interesting, right? …No. There was an opportunity for an actual good comedy anime, and maybe there could’ve been a good bit of mystery in there, too! There was such a unique setting to work with, yet it’s as if nothing changed from season two. There was no improvement on the characters, no improvement on the story, nothing. It’s probably because there’s no character development left for Nasa and Tsukasa, which is an example of why romance anime like this just doesn’t work. When is it ever fun to just look at a married couple do mundane married couple things with no such aim or development? Exactly, it isn’t.

If everything was executed well like in season one and was written with much more creativity and less feeling like the writer asked the Google Bard AI to create a script for a romcom with some weird mysterious character, maybe this wouldn’t feel so irritatingly dry. Nasa and Tsukasa’s love in the first season seems much more natural and less awkward, and there were moments that kept you engaged and wanting more. There was room for character development which meant things wouldn’t get so boring. Unfortunately, after season one, room for character development vanished and the writer was so out of ideas that they couldn’t get their head out of the clouds trying to think of something good.

For better romcom anime, I’d recommend these shows:
Komi-san wa, Komyushou desu. (Komi Can’t Communicate)
Kawaii dake ja Nai Shikimori-san (Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie)
Or for if you’re feeling wacky, Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan (Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan)
Sorry if you’ve seen all of ‘em. I’m not a seasoned romcom-er.

I don’t really have much else to say without this becoming a review of the second season as well, so I’ll end it around here.

If you want to waste time watching more of the unfunny married couple, the soulless side characters that surround them and a failure of an interesting “mysterious character” and story, check this ONA out. It’s better to put it on in the background rather than pay attention to anything, since there’s nothing worth watching. Unless you want a quick way to fall asleep. If you’re looking for something that’s worth your time, though, you’ve stopped at the wrong entry on AnimeNew.

Thank you for reading my review.