Here’s the thing about Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy. In truth I don’t need this show to work for me for fall to succeed as a season. It’s strictly gravy – anything I get from it is a bonus. That said, with a series you pick out as a potential sleeper, especially one based strictly on gut, there’s always a little extra rooting interest. I certainly want it to succeed, even if it’s not part of the core of shows that for me carry the weight of this season on their backs.
Although I did indeed set this series aside in my mind as one to keep an eye on based strictly on a feeling, when one dug a little deeper there were a few more tangible reasons to do so. Director Ichikawa Kazuya did the very underrated – and cleverly-directed – Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun, and writer Gotou Midori (Aoyama-kun, Hoozuki no Reitetsu) has a solid adaptation track record. Still, in the end this is a show based on a Vocaloid song (with a manga in-between) and in truth, I’ve hated pretty much every one of those anime has puked out so far. So the odds were truthfully still pretty lousy.
I’m happy to report that after one episode, I feel pretty good about where Chuubyou is going. I found the premiere to be quite fun and amusing in a manic sort of way. The humor was hit-and-miss (more hit than miss for me), but – as I’d hoped – doesn’t seem to be mean-spirited or misfortune-driven. If Chuubyou was going to work it was going to have to be a series with a lot of heart, and I suspect that may well turn out to be the case. And if it goes any deeper than that, that too would be a bonus.
The basic premise has a first-year transfer student named Hijiri Mizuki (very capably played by Akasaki Chinatsu), arriving at a new high school nervous and desperate to try and fit in – all the more so because she has an eye patch due to an infection. There she encounters the titular boys, the most important of whom is the tokusatsu otaku Noda Yamato (Yamashita Daiki). Unfortunately for Mizuki we all know eye patches to a chuunibyou are like a red cape to a bull, and Yamato-kun immediately brands her as “Pink” – the long-awaited fifth member of the hero team whose powers have not yet awakened.
The other boys are fairly standard archetypes at this point – the ikemen obsessed with 2D girls, the tsuntsun, the Gendou Ikari/smug glasses guy – though I’m sure they’ll get their moments in turn – but it’s Yamashita’s bombastic performance as Yamato that carries the premiere. He and Akasaki-san have a good chemistry on-screen, and she plays the tsukkomi to his boke to perfection. The thing is, of course, that everything Yamato does to her he thinks he’s doing for her – he’s trying to be kind and heroic in his own clueless way. Indeed, the fact that the Chuubyou boys have set up a hero club to help those in need suggests this angle is going to be played to the hilt, and (perhaps not entirely realistically) their classmates seem to view them more with amused affection than derision.
There is an elephant in the room with chuunibyou comedies of course, which is this – is it really okay for 16 year-olds to be behaving this way? There does come a time when childish fantasies need to be set aside and reality faced head-on, but there’s something to be said for keeping the child alive inside us even as we’re dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood. Most chuunibyou anime don’t ever confront this – Kyoto Animation’s Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! did so beautifully in its finale (though it pissed that away with an utterly pointless sequel), but that’s the exception. I have no idea whether Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy will or not, but so far there seems to be enough here for it to succeed as a comedy either way. Given the personal nature of my interest in it, I’d love to see that happen.
