The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt – Episode 1

Content warning: fan service, sexual harassment

What’s it about? Class rep Togo and local gyaru Poem are always butting heads, particularly when it comes to the school dress code. Poem doesn’t think they could possibly have anything in common, but then the two schoolyard enemies end up sitting right next to each other in remedial math class.

I feel like this show has something it wants to say about not judging books by their covers. When stuck together for more than a few minutes, Poem and Togo quickly discover that they’re both more than meets the eye, and it seems pretty clear they’re on the path to an “unlikely” romance now that they’ve blasted past their initial impressions of each other. With that philosophy at its heart, it feels reductive to base a lot of this review around the show’s opening scene. We should look beyond first impressions, after all! Generally I agree with this sentiment… except when those first impressions are so rancid that they kill any goodwill I might have had towards the rest of the series.

The show’s introductory skit follows a familiar formula. Togo gets Poem in trouble for violating the dress code, pointing out her dyed hair but fixating on her short skirt—apparently so short that he can see her underwear. Sexy underwear, he says, that would “naturally” drive any man into a carnal frenzy, for which she would have no one to blame but herself. The audience doesn’t get to see the undies in question, but we get damn close: the fan service camera zooms right in and upwards, reducing Poem to her hemline and thighs while Togo effectively calls her a slut in front of the entire school.

She gets embarrassed, angrily calls him a pervert, and punches him so hard he throws up. It’s all very stylish (the color drains from the world when Poem’s fist makes contact, but Togo’s puke is rainbow) but all the flashy execution in the world can’t distract from the fact we’ve seen a version of this sordid joke a billion times in so-called comedy anime over the decades. Fan service, humiliation, and slapstick violence coalesce into a stupid haze of gendered clichés. It’s just the distasteful repetition of a formula that was never funny to begin with.

As his key character establishing moment, I believe it’s meant to set up that Togo is blunt to a fault and a stickler for the rules, but mostly I just get the impression that he’s rude, unkind, and has both a voyeuristic streak and some outdated ideas about How Women Should Dress. What part of that is meant to endear me to the guy? I don’t care how much accidental flirting and sincere bonding happens between them in the later parts of the episode, I’m hardly rooting for a romance between him and Poem when his attitude towards her has been so crude and awful. I don’t want the guy, and his “observations” about her underwear, anywhere near her!

So, not off to a very strong start on either the romantic or the comedic front. It’s a shame, because done right, this premise could slot The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt right next to charming “they’re not what you expect!” teen rom-coms like last season’s You and I Are Polar Opposites or Tamon’s B-Side. But despite its best efforts (again, the visuals really do pop), it lacks the crucial endearing qualities that makes those series sparkle. Togo and Poem aren’t separated by perceived stereotypes or communication issues, he’s just an asshole who sexually harassed her in front of all her peers. It’s not sweet or funny to learn that the strait-laced nerdy-looking guy is actually bad at maths, because this so-called subversion of expectations leads directly into a different cliché as Poem tutors him.

I respected Poem’s proactivity here, at least—she offers to help him solve the worksheet in exchange for him looking the other way regarding her crimes against dress code—but her gambit doesn’t even work, and he says more nasty stuff about her body and her clothes afterwards! The storytelling is clearly keen on keeping this poor girl on the back foot and not punishing Togo for anything. Sure, he gets comedy-punched several times in this episode, but that over-the-top violence is a cheap trick to justify the show’s mistreatment of Poem herself.

This episode is working very hard to be engaging, energetic, colorful, and fun, but it simply can’t recover from the acidic awfulness of its opening joke. Watch a better rom-com, folks! There are plenty out there that pull of the “opposites attract” or “more than meets the eye” thing without being so gross towards their female leads.