The premise of a girl playing the part of the Bad Girl when, in reality, she’s a total sweetheart is an alluring premise. Just imagining her trying to keep up her image was enough to tantalize me into picking up this show for this season! Plus, it’s labeled as a Seinin series, so that means we should get some grit mixed in with the comedy! After checking it out, did this show hold up to my expectations?
Let’s go!
First Episode Synopsis
Yuu is a good girl at heart. She gets good grades, she follows the rules, and even her teachers adore her; however, there is a girl she admires… Atori Mizutori… who stands at the school gates and greets everyone as part of the discipline committee. When she walks up to get her greeting from her, Atori walks right past and, instead, greets Yuu’s friend Suzuka. This prompts Yuu to become a Bad Girl because she feels that Atori won’t greet her if she remains good.
So, Yuu becomes a Bad Girl by two-tone dying her hair, starts wearing clip-on earrings, puts a star on her neck in the form of a temporary tattoo, stretches out her clothes to make them baggy, and places erasers on the heels of her shoes to elevate them. She’s hoping that she’s in violation of some sort of school rule, but Atori says it’s all fine, and even though the neck tattoo is against the rules, she lets it slide because she thinks that Atori is cute.
Later, she runs into her on the bus. They both simultaneously give up their seats for an elderly woman, then get into a conversation. Atori questions whether or not she is a Bad Girl, to which Yuu replies she is because she eats candy, drinks tea on the bus, and doodles on the windows.
This is pretty much what you can expect for the rest of this show.
Worth Watching?
NO – Being a Seinin 4-koma series, I expected comedy, but I also expected it to take itself a bit more seriously, too. With the way the synopsis presented itself, I expected Yuu to be rough around the edges, getting into fights, badmouthing those around her; however, she’s caught doing cute stuff like feeding a stray cat or fawning over something cute in a store. She may even threaten someone who caught her in the act to keep up her bad girl image; however, that’s not what we received.
Instead, we received a main character who is pretending to be a bad girl by doing some of the most elementary and childish BS you can imagine. A lot of the things she does just screams zero intelligence, and even her friend Suzuka flat-out questions her as to why she’s even doing stuff like this instead of just walking right up to Atori and talking to her. Like, come on… doodling on the windows? Stacking erasers on the heels of your shoes? This is supposed to make you a bad girl?
Sorry, but this level of humor isn’t for me. I didn’t laugh at one single joke… all of which felt incredibly forced with poor delivery. Plus, on a personal note, due to having misophonia, Yuu’s voice was grating on my ears and irritated me. That in and of itself made it a chore to sit through this first episode; however, I’ve endured stuff like this before if the plot and story were good enough to keep watching. Sadly, Bad Girl is less than a generic experience. There is nothing about Yuu that suggests that she is a Bag Girl in high school… she just comes off like a pouty 5-year-old with a simplistic imagination. I just can’t buy that.
Maybe there are some people out there who would enjoy this show, but I am not one of them, so this gets a hard pass from me.
