Ichijyoma Mankitsu Gurashi! – Episode 1

What’s it about? When Meiko gets a scholarship to attend an elite girls’ school in Tokyo, she’s excited to leave her crowded family home in the countryside and experience fancy city living. On arrival at the “dorms” she quickly realizes there have been some misunderstandings. First, Meiko was only offered a place because a rich heiress mistook her for a famous mangaka with a similar name. Second, the dormitories are embedded in a manga café, and the elite young ladies Meiko will be living with are all slovenly streamers and eccentric nerds.

This plot hinges on a miscommunication and the whole wacky comedy of errors goes from there. If you cringe away from “caught in a lie” set-ups where the protagonist has their heart in the right place but keeps digging their own grave deeper and deeper, maybe this show won’t be for you. On the other hand, if you enjoy that type of story, you might not be hooked by the premise either, since Ichijyoma Mankitsu Gurashi! seems committed to such a breezy, cartoony tone that the stakes of Meiko’s accidental deception are pretty low. Generally speaking, this premiere seems more interested in setting up jokes about underwear than exploring the tangled psychosocial web Meiko finds herself in.

There’s an oddly retro quality to this series: something about its character design and aesthetic sensibilities harken back to the moe boom of yore, and a lot of its goofy fan service and self-referential humor feel like they wouldn’t be out of place in a show from ten or fifteen years ago; the kind of thing I’d end up watching as a teenager because my friends and I happened to find the DVD on sale, or because someone downloaded it all to their hard drive for a laugh. Maybe that makes it sound like I had a fond, nostalgic time with this premiere, but that’s not quite the case. Its endless high-energy gags and commitment to throwback silliness mostly made me tired, to be honest. It’s formulaic and familiar, but not in an endearing way.

Meiko is the designated “straight man” as the newbie to this quirky world of quirky girls and the comedy formula relies on her reacting in various forms of shock and horror to the gimmicky antics of her new roommates. There’s an oblivious but all-powerful rich girl who defies the expectations of her ladylike upbringing by being a big fan of smutty manga; a short girl who keeps yelling that she’s not an elementary schooler even though she looks like one; and a charismatic but lazy vlogger who complains about being cold but never wears pants. Everyone is largely a collection of tropes and potential punchlines sticky-taped together.

I want to say these girls all have room to grow, but I get the sense that this one’s going to be light-touch on character development and much more dedicated to Shenanigans. The opening credits promise a large ensemble cast of increasingly “eccentric” individuals in a parade of stock fan service costumes like maids and Playboy bunnies, so… I’d hazard a guess that this show is going to expand its roster of characters, and put them in various absurd situations, before it gives its main four any more depth.

I love a “girls doing stuff” slice-of-life show, but this one just doesn’t hit for me. Most of the humor relies on Meiko reacting to the chaos she’s been thrown into, forced to frantically pretend she’s someone she’s not so she doesn’t lose her accommodation and opportunities, and while I get the joke, it’s the same joke over and over and it gets pretty exhausting. It doesn’t help that a lot of the chaos is steeped in clunky attempts at fan service: oh no, she opened the shower while someone was using it, oops! Oh no, the streamer girl isn’t wearing any pants and just gave Meiko a full view of her underwear, gah!

It’s all very convoluted and quickly oversteps the line from silly (affectionate) to silly (derogatory). Which is honestly a shame, because I’m sure you could get some really fun material out of the setting. A manga café is a pretty interesting backdrop for slice-of-life antics! But Ichijyoma Mankitsu Gurashi! isn’t thinking about what could be interesting, it’s thinking about what awkward and blush-worthy over-the-top situations it can stuff Meiko into next. I wish her well for her future endeavors as she inevitably digs her hole deeper, but I won’t be tuning into future episodes to see how it all goes.