My Senpai Is Annoying, directed by Ryota Itoh. Shunsuke Takeuchi and Tomori Kusunoki. Doga Kobo, 2021. Episode 2, “Udon with the Occasional Full Moon” (of 12). 24 minutes. Rated TV-14.
Available on Funimation.
The second episode of this series confirms my earlier suspicion that this show intends to draw only loosely from its source material, taking the vignettes of the manga and giving them a more definite plot structure. Unlike episode 1, which featured largely original material, episode 2 draws almost all of its incidents from the manga, but it has reordered and rewritten them. Because it’s doing a good job with this re-creation, I find that I can enjoy the anime without feeling as if I’m retreading the same story.
The quality is quite good, and though some occasional CGI peeks through the animation, it’s mostly not too obvious. Considering that the manga is quite sparse in details (despite being in full color), the anime is surprisingly rich, visually.
However, story-wise, this episode is much weaker than the last. Previously, the show introduced us to the setting and characters and gave us a real dilemma—Igarashi screwed up at work and Takeda had to help fix it—but this episode has decidedly less going on. Mostly, Igarashi spends the episode fretting that her breasts are too small, and she gets in some embarrassing situations as a result, a type of joke that has already been done to death in anime. So I just rolled my eyes and muttered, “Yes, I too have seen Toradora.”
As I said, all this material comes from the manga, but the manga spaces it out and intersperses it with other things. Bringing all of these jokes together into one episode is perhaps questionable, but, again, it makes for a more coherent plot. It also clearly establishes Igarashi and Takeda’s relationship—she isn’t sure what she thinks of him, but he thinks of her as the daughter he never had. Igarashi simultaneously appreciates the warmth of his affection but takes offense that he sees her as a child.
The episode has two highlights. In the first, Takeda attacks and captures a pervert on the train who was trying to film up Igarashi’s skirt. This was well handled even though this has become a stock scenario in Japanese media, analogous to that scene in American comics and movies where the hero rescues the heroine in an alley. It also introduces Takeda’s skill in judo.
The second highlight of the episode is the budding relationship between two side characters, Sakurai Toukou and Kazama Souta. I don’t particularly care for the manga version of these two, but the anime is continuing in its promise to flesh out the supporting cast.
Comments
I mentioned in my review of the manga that the story’s setup would make more sense in a high-school setting than in the business world. Episode 1 of the anime almost changed my mind since it successfully builds its plot around the business setting. Episode 2, however, makes me think again that this should be in high school; it makes no sense for a grown woman in her twenties, who’s already well past puberty, to wonder if she can make her breasts bigger. In fact, given that Igarashi has not matured physically since she was nine, she should probably worry less about her breasts specifically and more about whether she has a glandular problem or some kind of thyroid disease.
This kind of plot, with a loli worrying about whether she’ll grow up, makes much more sense for a teenager than for an adult.
So far, I’m enjoying this series, though it’s nothing to write home about (maybe write on a blog about). But I do hope we all realize it’s never going to wrap up: Alas, like so many anime these days, it’s scheduled for a mere twelve episodes, about half the length of a typical miniseries in the U.S. That means no conclusion.
So, although I like the series, it’s also another example of how anime is dying as a medium: This is yet another low-risk loli show aimed at the moe addict, running for too few episodes to build a significant plot.
