Yet another premiere out of the season preview. And yet another series that’s not about kids – or at least, high-school or younger kids. The subject at hand with Goukon ni Ittara Onna ga Inakatta Hanashi is college- well, kids. Six of them to be precise. This time it’s a romcon and a shoujo romcom to boot, a relatively rare subgenre in anime in the 2020’s. The staff seems to be nothing special but the source manga gets pretty good reviews everywhere I’ve seen.

The premise here seems pretty straightforward. Three guys are invited to a mixer by one of the guy’s female friends (let me just say for the record I find the very idea of mixers to be incredibly unappealing, but to each their own). When they arrive they’re stunned to see three ikemen (hot dudes) sitting at the appointed table. Confusion, even more so when it turns out the three beefcakes are indeed the three girls promised. Turns out they all work as hosts (I assume) at a drag bar and – their leader, Suwa-san, says – didn’t have time to change after work. I’m highly skeptical of that, but there’s no proof to the contrary.

I must say for me, the appeal of this was less in practice than in theory. Honestly the whole setup is just a pretext for the cross-dressing girls to troll the hapless dudes, who aren’t sure whether to be turned on or freaked out (except for the airhead among them). It’s mildly amusing but not as amusing as it acts like it is. Gender-bender comedy can be fun and this could be heading in the direction of exploring some interesting social conventions, but I didn’t find myself really liking anybody. And the over-reliance on chibi and distorted animation almost never clicks with me, this premiere being no exception. I’ll give it another shot next week but this looks like a cutthroat season, so I’m going to need to feel a lot more buy-in than I did with the premiere.