First Impressions: Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou

I don’t know what I’ll end up blogging just yet, so we’ll just start off with a series of first impressions. First up, a show from Brain’s Base.

• The hero of our anime is Uza Kazunari and he wants a peaceful high school life after having endured a tumultuous junior high career. Two things always seem to rear their ugly heads in like-minded anime: junior high always sucks, and somehow, protagonists always think high school will be an improvement in every way. In reality, I really doubt high school is much of a departure from junior high. If anything, all of junior high’s qualities should just be more amplified in high school, for better or for worse.

• For what it’s worth, the first episode looks nice. I like the way the beams of light cut through this scene:

Then as you watch the episode, you start to see how overused the light beams are. But nevertheless, the animation isn’t bad. It’s the first episode though, so that’s doesn’t exactly say a whole lot. By the way, the girl’s name is Kawai Ritsu. I don’t have much to say about the main character’s desire to date a refined girl just yet. Too early to tell exactly what he means by this, but it would be interesting to compare Ritsu with every other female character we meet throughout the show. In what way is she refined and those girls are not?

• I guess I’ll watch every OP at least once. I spy a scantily-clad woman with a bottle of alcohol. I suppose that’s unrefined. That bottle though…

• Oh hey, Kazunari’s parents are transferring to work elsewhere, and our hero will have to move into a dormitory of some sort. Gosh, anime and its abundance of absentee parental units…

• On his way home, Kazunari comes across a disheveled-looking man who appears to be peeping through an elementary school’s fence. The man, however, denies that he had an ill-intentions: “Who wouldn’t want to stick something into a whole like this?”

The patrolling police officer concurs. I guess that was supposed to be amusing or something? I dunno, didn’t make me laugh or smile.

• Kazunari finally makes his way to his new home only to discover that the creepy, disheveled-looking man is his roommate and only a curtain separates the two. Wacky, I guess.

• Again, our hero repeats his words from the start of the show: he wants a peaceful life and a refined girlfriend! I don’t really get why he’s so uppity about his neighbor. If you keep to yourself, your life can and should be perfectly peaceful. Or he could, y’know, spend all of his time at cram school and the library, only coming home to sleep. I dunno, our protagonist sounds a little annoying and entitled.

• But naturally, he runs into Ritsu just as he’s about to leave, and ultimately decides that he would like to stay: “I can’t believe this! I get to live in the same complex as a girl who’s totally my type!” Bro, you don’t know anything about her.

• Well, she looks terribly friendly:

• How meta: “Sorry! I’ve always wanted to try that! I wanted to act like one of those female side-characters in romance dramas who smugly spout suggestive lines without actually being any help at all.” A little too obviously referential, if you ask me.

• Oh boy, it’s another one of those shows where the love interest gets to beat the crap out of the male protagonist because female-to-male comic violence has always been funny.

• Uh oh, Mayumi is introduced as the working woman. Naturally, when we first see her, the main character points out how much booze she’s drinking and how big her breasts are. And like practically every working woman in every anime ever, her biggest problem in life has to do with marriage. Sigh… She then whines about not attracting young boys: “Not even a guy who screams ‘virgin’ is willing to look twice at me!” Naturally, a grown woman’s pride has to be assuaged by a high school student, so Kazunari goes on and on about how Mayumi’s extremely attractive. It’s like a sad, broken record. Every character’s a stereotype, but anime never lets up on adult women. They’re always marriage rejects in these shows. C’mon, have you never talked to a woman before? Can’t you come up with something different? Or do people really enjoy these portrayals of an adult woman so much that every single anime has to feature the exact same caricature of a jilted wannabe-bride who can’t help being inappropriately sexual with the male protagonist?

• Mayumi then throws herself at the main character, ’cause adult women can’t get enough virgin dicks, and wouldja look at who just happens to be walking by?

Oh man, it’s our refined future girlfriend, and she slaps Mayumi upside the head! The misunderstandings, the comic violence, the refined, hard-to-get, tsundere girl in contrast with the boozy, jilted, hypersexual woman!

• As if that wasn’t enough…

Don’t worry, it’s not just Mayumi that ends up landing onto the protagonist; Ritsu joins her in flattening our hero like a pancake. Ah, the Japanese shounen… constantly enduring physical punishment because that’s the only standout thing about him!

• When the three of them finally return home, Sumiko lectures the two girls, but mostly Mayumi. Yo, peep this gem: “And here I thought getting a boyfriend had mellowed you out.”

• Mayumi tells everyone about her two-timing boyfriend. Aw, that’s sad. I should empath–… wait, hold your horses! We can’t simply just feel bad for her! It turns out that every boyfriend she dates eventually cheats on her. So y’see, it’s really her fault. If she didn’t have such poor tastes in guys, they wouldn’t cheat on her! Brilliant!

• In response to Kazunari’s bruises:

Guys, guys! Our refined girlfriend does have emotions! I’ll tame this shrew just yet! Wait and see, fellas!

• One more negative portrayal of an adult woman for the road:

• So what are my first impressions of Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou? Pretty generic, pretty trashy. I really wanted to give it a chance as you can tell by my tone at the start of the post, but everything afterwards just eventually derailed into a trainwreck. And to top it all off, the show’s not even funny.