The first week of this season was very much a “best of the rest” race, as all the also-rans in the preview made their initial bows. Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is certainly a part of that mix, but given the nature of this season that means it’s probably landing on the bubble. It’s an interesting one, though. The second episode had both higher highs and lower lows than the premiere as far as I’m concerned. I guess that could be taken as encouraging or as a warning, depending on your frame of mind…
Unless they’re among the best of breed – and even then sometimes – it’s the nature of gag comedies to be hit-and-miss. The key is the batting average – how often do the skits connect, and how often do they fall flat? And of course, when they do connect just how big is the impact? Are these huge laughs or light chuckles? Aharen’s premiere was on the light and fluffy side, but the second episode goes under the hood with the premise a little bit more. It also goes for the laugh a bit more openly, which means it’s more noticeable when it swings and misses.
Based on this week, I’d say the series is pretty winning when it’s focused on Raidou and Aharen and falls flat when it focuses on anyone else. The bits with the leads – the eye drops, the Reversi, and especially the one in-between – were all varying degrees of successful. Everything with the stalker was a shelf turd, as they say in the whisky trade. That character in particular is already an exceptionally tired trope, and it was never amusing ever before it became overused. None of the stalker bits here were either funny or fluffy, just kind of tiresome and dumb. If she remains a big part of the mix going forward that’s going to be a problem.
On the other hand, I really do like the Aharen-Raidou dynamic. As a comedy team they work very well not so much because of their physical disparity, but their disparate natures. Raidou is someone with an overactive imagination given to flights of dramatic fantasy. And because Aharen is so uncommunicative it leaves a lot of space for his imagination to fill in. That’s actually the source of most of the comedy here, and it works very well. The eye drop thing was mostly just physical comedy (and grounded in reality), and the Reversi bit was effectively an omake. But the fly sketch was hilarious.
That was a winner for me, on every level. As physical comedy it relies on Aharen’s reaction shots, and to great effect. The best moment was when Raidou came out of the bathroom with his fly still open (how does that even happen?). There was nothing highbrow or anything here, just really well-executed slapstick comedy that made me LOL with regularity. It was the best chapter of the series so far, and it gives me hope that the series might have more material on that level to work with. The anime is clearly well-executed enough to make the gags work – it’s really just a question of whether enough of the gags are going to be good enough in the first place. And it’s a question I can’t answer yet.
