Kao ni Denai Kashiwada-san to Kao ni Deru Oota-kun – 01

As usual Sundays are the insane day this season, looks like. So it’s going to be a mess of first impressions today, in which my appreciated for a series should not be inferred from the brevity of the post. In short, I liked Kao ni Denai Kashiwada-san to Kao ni Deru Oota-kun. I liked it rather a lot, in fact.

One observation I would make is that, objectively, middle school romcoms are better than high school romcons as a group. They’re less played out, less drowning in formula. Sure, the “hook” junior high romcom is hardly virgin territory (no pun intended) but there’s so much more freedom in this subgenre. A series like Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota has so much more freedom to just have fun with it. The kids can act like goofs without it seeming forced. And the awkward dance around the topic of romantic entanglement is perfectly natural.

Of course the specifics still have to carry their weight but so far, they are with this series. The title kids are second-years (the eternal “chuuni”). And the hook is in the title. Oota-kun betrays every emotion and Kashiwada-san betrays nothing no matter what happens (except she does, if you look closely). We start out, fittingly, with a card game – Old Maid, the kiddie version of poker face. The results are clear, but Oota is a glutton for punishment. He keeps coming back for more. But a twist here is that Kashiwada confesses to him in the first episode. Because she’s such a Sphinx he assumes she’s trolling him, but she’s not.

Another nice tweak here is that Kashiwada is a loner type who – it looks like – winds up being pals with a circle of boys. Kashiwada’s two pals Sata and Tadokoro (sorry, I have no idea which is which) notice she’s always alone and sort of wordlessly adopt her into their friend circle. There’s a great pool cleaning scene (as Konobi proved, a great vehicle for middle school romcoms) that cements their group dynamic and expresses the sheer joy of being this age and acting like an idiot. Hell, there’s even a tanuki (which most of the group assigned to clean the pool uses as an excuse to slack off). All in all a very charming first episode, and the first of my possible sleepers to really make a strong impression.

Toujima Tanzaburou wa Kamen Rider ni Naritai – 01

These sorts of modern-day tokusatsu/super sentai send-ups usually have a pretty limited shelf life with me. I have no skin in the game with “Kamen Rider” or any other tokusatsu really – I neither like or dislike it particularly but none of them ever made any impact with me. As such, even when I like a premiere my expectations for shelf life are pretty limited. Once the joke is played out, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly.

That said, I did like the premiere of Toujima Tanzaburou wa Kamen Rider ni Naritai. The story of the titular protagonist played out in engaging fashion (and having Konishi Katsuyoshi perfectly cast helped, of course). And the series has a super-experienced director in Ikezoe Takahiro, along with a generally very good staff at Lidenfilms (who have to be the busiest studio around these days, surely). This was literally the last series in the season preview for a reason but in that context, the first episode was really quite good.

What I especially liked were the little shadings which gave Tanzaburou depth, like his mother leaving him alone with his VHS tapes and his dad apparently abandoning him at a matsuri with ¥4000 (fuck you, seriously). Even if this means nothing to me Kamen Rider means something to him – he was basically Tanzaburou’s only companion. This is seinen fantasy of course, so realism isn’t much on the table. But sure, he goes a little too hard, realizes that’s pathetic and resolves to come back to reality (selling all his swag), but gets presented with an irresistible opportunity when “Shocker” shows up at a matsuri in the form of three yakuza shaking down a stall (little-known fact outside Japan: almost all festival concessions are run by the yakuza).

Once in a blue moon one of these shows holds my interest, Sentai Daishikkaku being a recent example. Sundays are brutal and I still have measured expectations with Tojima Wants to be a Kamen Rider, but for now I’m interested enough to watch at the very least. Beyond that who knows – it’s the first week of the season, no rush to close any doors at this point.