Whenever I see a slice-of-life show that involves otaku culture, I’m there. That’s what we get with Ichijouma Mankitsu Gurashi! Add in a country bumpkin that moves to Tokyo and enrolls in a rich girl’s school, and now you’ve painted a picture of trying to fit in not only as someone from a different social status, but also as a possible otaku. It’s a rather interesting premise, but was the execution just as interesting?
Let’s go!
First Episode Synopsis
Meiko lives in the countryside and is delivering papers to try and help make ends meet. The town is small enough that everyone knows one another, so when she delivers one of her papers, she’s offered to take some vegetables from their farm, which she appreciates because of her money situation. She thinks that she dropped one of her fliers, but it turns out it’s an advertisement for a college, and the only qualification seems to be that you need to be a transfer student. It seems too good to be true, but she applies anyway…. And gets instantly accepted.
So, she packs up and moves, leaving her entire family behind as if they weren’t in dire straits, and she just abandoned them! When she arrives, she meets Rie Amamiya, the daughter of the family that owns the university. She’s confused because she thought she arrived at her dorm, but she stumbled upon a manga café instead. Turns out, the dorm is in the café, and Rie is a heavy manga enthusiast, and every book in the café belongs to her! Meiko is still confused as to why she got accepted so easily, but she quickly learns that she shares the name with Rie’s favorite mangaka, and Rie thinks it’s her. Despite trying to plead her case, Rie ignores everything and just assumes that Meiko is the mangaka that she admires.
We then get the standard fare of being introduced to the other characters… Marika… who is always cold, yet wears no pants, thus parading around in her panties all day. She’s also a “MyuTuber” with 1.5 million subscribers. Then, we meet Neo, who looks like she belongs in elementary school, but she is a full-blown college-aged girl… who wants to become a pro gamer. And thus, Meiko’s new life of living in a hybrid manga café/college dorm begins.
Worth Watching?
MAYBE – I’ve seen shows like this more times than I would like to admit. This is the kind of show that just screams “let’s blow all the good stuff in the first episode, then fall into mediocrity and stay there for the other 11.”
I feel that way because by the time the first episode ended, the whole “wow, I still think you’re my favorite mangaka” joke already got old. It was a little funny when it was first unveiled, and Rie’s ignorance of logic did get a chuckle, but then the joke disappeared completely for like ¾ of the episode, only to return at the very end to remind you it was there, and when it came back, I didn’t laugh the second time. By that time, I was more invested in learning about the new characters that were introduced.
Speaking of which, Marika kind of got the full reveal (and not just her panties) right out of the gate. I feel like there’s nothing left to discover about her. The same can be said for Neo, too. So, that leads me to wonder where these characters go from here because after just one episode, all we have left as options is either just watch these characters in their everyday lives with the same running joke, or introduce even more characters to break up the monotony. That’s why I think this series will fade into mediocrity after just one episode, like many others before it.
If it does, it will depend solely on the strength of the comedy and if they can keep things interesting to get me to keep watching. If they can’t, then this might be one I drop and free up some of my already fast-dwindling free time. Another reason why I may not stick around is that I can’t stand a couple of the characters’ voices. They are those typical high-pitched voices that I find very grating on the ears. I know it’s to give off “cute vibes,” but that doesn’t work with me, so again, the writing has to be very solid for me to overlook that, and I just can’t see that with this show.
But… I’ll give it a chance and see where it goes.
