As I’ve noted many times before, it’s always an especially nice feeling when a sleeper comes through for you.  2021 wasn’t a great year for anime by any means, but on the plus side I had really good luck with my sleeper picks this year.  I had no real reason to suspect Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi would be any good.  Indeed, the title led one to believe it was going to be a different sort of show than it turned out to be – and a type I’m not normally crazy about.  But the vibes were good for me based on a few promo images and the premise, for reasons I can’t fully explain.

There’s nothing too complicated about Senpai ga Uzai’s success, truthfully.  It plays it pretty straight – a bunch of generally likeable and nice people getting on each other’s nerves just enough to endear themselves to each other, some nascent romance, some comedy that avoids mean-spiritedness.  Every season needs a few shows like this and they used to have them most of the time – straightforward relationship comedy that makes no pretensions towards anything else.  But series like Senpai ga Uzai no Hanashi have become increasingly rare in recent years.

The only downside, really, is that while a LN could sleep with the production committee’s kid sister and still get multiple seasons, adaptations of this sort of manga almost never do.  So I kind of figured we’d get a “read the manga ending”, and that’s exactly what the show delivered.  As such, it was bound to focus on the main couple, which is fine as I like Harumi and Futaba.  But the strength of Senpai ga Uzai is definitely the ensemble, and there was no way to show serious progression in this particular relationship without it seeming unrealistically rushed (or God forbid, a timeskip).

What comes out of that is a very pleasant and feel-good ending that feels right in line with the spirit of the series, without transcending itself in any way.  If I were to quibble with anything it might be that Futaba doesn’t seem to have grown all that much, really.  She still has a Napoleon complex, she still tears up when under stress, she still can’t hold her beer.  She’s gotten better as a salesperson of course, but she was always thoroughly competent.  And her relationship with Harumi remains rather out of balance – but then, the whole senpai and kouhai thing is practically sacred in Japan, so that’s not especially out of place.

These two are what they are – which is fine, that’s what this series is.  For his part Harumi isn’t really that annoying at all.  He’s basically a total bro, and even if he condescends to Futaba sometimes it’s done out of affection (I’m not ready to say “love” yet).  He’s exactly the senpai any rookie should want, in other words, and a thoroughly nice guy generally.  Right up to the end there’s really no commitment as to whether this is going anywhere romantically – in fact Harumi basically says he’ll stay by her side and “protect” her until she meets the guy who’ll do it permanently.  But in his own way he does state the case that whatever he has with Futaba, he considers it special.

As for the rest of the gang, it’s really just a touching of the bases.  The most persuasive couple in the series, Touko and Souta, are still inching their way forward.  Yuuto once more “coincidentally” runs into Natsumi while running, and the two of them literally jog off into the sunset.  Mona still does weirdly inexplicably things.  The flashback sequence to Futaba’s first day was interesting – even having been wronged the way she was (she gets demoted from junior high to elementary student between the flashback and the ending), it’s pretty sassy of her to speak to her senpai and even her boss like that on the first day on the job…

Comedies like Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi can be rather ephemeral, really.  But that just makes me appreciate them all the more.  There’s no selling short the value of a series that just makes you feel good every week – not too many demands, never talking down to the audience, letting the flow of the character’s lives drive the comedy.  It’s not easy to make it look this easy – especially in comedy, which is really, really hard to begin with.  Anime has always been a good vehicle for this sort of story – I just wish we saw a lot of more of them.