I don’t think we’re in guilty pleasure territory with Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko. I mean, I don’t really feel guilty about liking it (even it does flirt with some kind of edgy territory in terms of gender politics and the new supporting character). It’s more a case of realizing it’s not really a show I should like. It pushes a lot of my buttons irritation-wise, that’s for sure. Yet for whatever reason I do find myself enjoying it, so far at least. Go figure.
Execution is the name of the game here. It’s not as if this series is breaking much new ground, so it has to do what it does with panache – that, and put just enough of a twist on the familiar to avoid too much repetition. I don’t necessarily find myself liking these characters per se (mostly). Misuzu is just evil and Carol is a walking borderline-racist stereotype. But they do entertain me, I can’t deny. And Tomo and Junichirou are likeable enough, in their awkward way.
The groper chapter was flirting with danger, but it more or less stuck the landing. It was sexist, don’t get me wrong – Tomo thinking “I just have to stand here and take it” and Jun having to step in and take charge of the situation. Tomo is a strong woman, she should be able to put a scumbag like that in his place. But she’s trying to present a certain image to the guy she likes, so she does what she does.
It really sucks that we’re being told this is something she has to do. But what sort of saves it is that Jun isn’t asking her to do that, in any way, shape, or form. He likes her as she is – not (openly) in the way she wants, maybe, but he accepts her. That bit where he told her to wear slacks was awkward, but he at least had the sense to apologize for it the next day. And it’s obvious why he said it in the first place – Misuzu was right about that, even if she regretted saying it almost as soon as the words left her mouth.
Misuzu is a straight troll, pretty much – the bit with the spats exemplifies that. Carol gives her another chance to indulge that side. She’s Misaki’s cousin and – apparently – fiancée. And, as Misuzu says, she’s no idiot – she sees the writing on the wall with Misaki and Tomo immediately. Taking this in the direction of Jun totally missing the boat and thinking she wants to beat somebody up was pretty amusing. Carol was pretty amusing generally, in fact – getting American-born bilingual idol Sally Amaki to play her was a smart move (though I did think it was Kugimiya Rie at first).
Carol is a not-too flattering gaijin trope, but dammit, she really was funny. Amaki’s line delivery helps. That whole “baka” thing had he LOL for some reason, and the “I can jump rope because I like bunnies”- and Jun’s reaction – was a hilarious moment. The Hippocratic Oath of comedy, as I’ve said ad nauseam, is “first, be funny”. And so far, Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko is pretty funny, at least for me. As long as that continues to be the case, I’ll have good reason to stick around.
Marty
January 12, 2023 at 11:54 pmWaitaminute, a Latino character (Juan?) entered the story?
Jk, jk.
All kidding aside, it is a pretty funny, if not particularly deep, series.
So the whole groper thing a real thing, or just an anime trope? Because i refuse to believe any society has normalized complacency to the point that victims of Sexual Assault are not incentivized to call out strangers for that stuff.
I’m genuinely curious how far these 12 episodes can go. This series IS over 100 chapters, but each chapter is just a page, so they got plenty of material to work with regardless.
Guardian Enzo
January 13, 2023 at 6:45 amThanks, autocorrect.
It’s in-between. Groping (more so on trains than buses) is a genuine problem, to the point where many lines have women-only cars during rush hour and there are signs encouraging people to police it themselves. It’s also not nearly as widespread as animanga would have you believe.
sonicsenryaku
January 13, 2023 at 6:56 amI found it really interesting that the english dub for this show got Sally Amaki to also be the dub voice for Carol. One of the few times (if ever) that I’ve ever seen that happen that wasn’t a product of not redubbing the voiceover in the alternate audio track
Guardian Enzo
January 13, 2023 at 7:12 amLOL. How is she?
sonicsenryaku
January 13, 2023 at 9:37 amShe’s superbly fluid in English and after watching both dubs, can clearly switch between american and japanese accents without any struggle. In terms of her performance, she’s mostly just translating over her cutesy, sleepy-ish delivery from the Japanese dub into English and nails the transition quite while albeit with some slight tweaking to her voice work to better capture the character within an “american” context
Guardian Enzo
January 13, 2023 at 10:00 amI don’t watch dubs too often but I’ll have to check that out. Since she’s actually American its not surprising that she speaks English at the native level. But stylistically dubs and Japanese are usually very different, so it’d interesting to see how she navigates those differences.
Simone
January 14, 2023 at 5:10 pmAfter having watched the episode with CR’s subtitles I got the feeling that Tomo’s attitude on the bus was “I don’t want Jun to know”. Less a matter of not wanting to look unfeminine and more a general case of feeling irrationally ashamed and embarrassed in a way that led her to want to hide it (which seems to be a common feeling in cases of sexual assault). Not sure if translation was faithful enough.
Guardian Enzo
January 14, 2023 at 7:40 pmI more or less got that vibe, so I think it was fine.
Howdy
January 15, 2023 at 9:25 amI would like to set a poll that this show should be called ‘Tomo-chan is dumber than a rock when the plot requires it’