First off, let me apologize if anyone has experienced issues connecting with the site. I’ve had to migrate hosts again (I’ll get into that in another post) and there may be some downtime while the DNS redirects are playing out. As a result it’s been a very long day and I find myself past my bedtime staring at a post that needs writing yet again…

That said, we’re three episodes in to Karakai Jouzu Takagi-san and while I’m still having a few cringe moments every episode with Kaji Yuuki as Nishikata, on balance I’m starting to feel pretty good about the charms of the series surviving the transition to anime. It’s interesting to see new viewers sort of going through the same doubts and discomfort I did when I was new to this series – there was always a charm to it, but for obvious reasons off-putting at the same time. I wasn’t sure what to make of that for a while, but I came around – and I think most viewers are going to as well (though I suspect we’ll lose a few along the way).

The other issue we didn’t have to deal with as manga readers, of course, is episode length. With Shin-Ei’s adaptation of Tonari no Seki-kun I consistently found myself feeling that the episodes were too short, but with Karakai Jouzu some viewers seem to think they’re too long. I get that, though I don’t necessarily feel it myself. It’s interesting to see how director Akagi has used the “Doyoubi” segments with the three comic relief girls – first as an omake, then as an episode break, and here as a cold open and again twice during the episode. Three segments of those three is a bit too much for me, but I suspect it’s a conscious effort to break up what might be seen as the sameness of the Nishikata-Takagi chapters.

For me, there’s enough meat to this pair’s relationship to sustain a full episode – a narrative to their “courtship”, and one which isn’t static but actually quite dynamic. I would argue that the tone of their encounters has already changed quite a bit (though that could be my perception having changed when I read these bits). There have already been a couple of watershed (no pun intended, though they both involve water) segments covered – first the swimming pool chapter, and this week the umbrella chapter. These comic vignettes carry a sense of weight to them – we’re starting to see the meaning behind what Takagi-san is doing here (is Nishikata?). That doesn’t mean she’s not being a bit mean, but, well… She’s in 7th-grade and most of us can remember what that was like…

First off for the happy couple this time, actually, is the indirect kiss sketch. As ever, this series is deeply enmeshed in tropes and it really should bother me so much more than it does, but somehow it doesn’t. The basic formula is familiar – Nishikata-kun decides to try and take Takagi-san down a peg, and she effortlessly turns it back on him. But of course, she didn’t hesitate for a moment in drinking that juice, did she? As for the training montage, I always wondered whether she knew Nishikata was forcing himself to work out as punishment for letting her best him at teasing (why not, she seems to know everything else). But again – she goes out of her way to compliment him and say “you’ve been looking good lately”, doesn’t she?

Ah, Takagi-san… What a vexing child you are. Everything she does seems to resist easy categorization. Does she praise Nishikata because she means it, or because she knows he’ll like it and keep doing what he’s doing – or just because she wants to see him turn into a beefsteak tomato? Does she forget her umbrella because she didn’t check the weather, or did she have an idea of what would happen (aiaigasa!) when it rained and she didn’t have it? I feel sorry for Nishikata, of course – how could you not? But somehow, I don’t feel as bothered by this as my intellectual side tells me I should. I can only chalk that up to good writing – and apart from the seiyuu side, to me there’s been nothing lost in the transition from manga to anime.