Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota – Episode 1

What’s it about? Kashiwada and Oota are middle school students who have difficulties truly expressing how they feel about each other.  Oota teases Kashiwada because he wants to see an actual reaction from her, only to be met with a poker face.  Despite being polar opposites, it’s clear that they have a crush on each other.

I immediately felt annoyed with this premiere.  The first few minutes focused on a card game that lasted way longer than it should have.  I understand that the point was to establish Kashiwada and Oota’s tense relationship, but it felt like such a waste of time.  The rest of the episode reinforces how obsessed Oota is with getting Kashiwada to express any kind of emotion to the point that even his friends call him out on his behavior.  While it’s blatantly obvious that Oota has a crush on Kashiwada, it’s frustrating that he’s resorting to the childish mentality that “boys bully the girls that they like.”  For example, he switches her drink with vinegar in the hopes that she changes her facial reactions, which is downright cruel.  

There are real world examples of kids losing their lives to bullying and I frankly didn’t find anything funny about this show trying to pass off Oota’s pranks as humor.  There’s nothing charming about a middle school kid stalking his crush everywhere she goes.  While I can understand that because of his age that he doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to recognize his feelings, it still doesn’t justify his actions at all.  I feel like people often try to absolve young boys from their terrible behavior with the excuse that “boys will be boys.”  That’s a dangerous mindset since it teaches young boys that certain attitudes are acceptable forms of masculinity.  It just reinforces rigid gender norms that girls have to be quiet and submissive while boys can act out as much as they want.  

As for Kashiwada herself, she doesn’t tolerate his behavior and makes sure his pranks backfire on him.  Beyond that she isn’t all that interesting of a character.  She sort of reminds me of Komi in the sense that we have to rely on a floating box over her head in order to understand what she’s feeling.  I’m grateful the series trailer indicated that she’ll eventually have her own group of friends, which is sorely needed since I truly can’t stand how annoying Oota is.  The comedy seems to be reliant on the ongoing push and pull between our protagonists.  An ongoing joke like this can only last so long before it becomes boring and personally, I don’t think this show has enough staying power for that to even work.  

The animation looks really nice and the character designs for everyone gives off a cozy feeling about them.  There are some scenes that linger on middle school students running around school trying to create the impression it’s a lively atmosphere.  Aside from that, it’s a really boring show folks.  We seem to be getting a lot of different romances this season and if you’re interested in series about middle school kids then this might be of interest to you.  I’ll be skipping this one folks.