Romantic comedies are fun and oftentimes have a hook to make them interesting. Kao ni Denai Kashiwada-san to Kao ni Deru Oota-kun is one about an expressionless girl and an overly expressive guy. It’s a typical oil and water attempting to emulsify into something cohesive story, and those can be rather fun. Does this show put a worthy spin to make this a romance that’s worth watching?
Let’s go!
First Episode Synopsis
We open with our two main characters, Oota and Kashiwada, engaged in a fierce battle of Old Maid. Despite his best efforts, Oota falls three times as he cannot read any of her expressions… because she doesn’t have any… but she can read all of his expressions… because he is very expressive.
We learn that Oota has a crush on Kashiwada and vice versa; however, Oota doesn’t want to accept the fact that an expressionless girl like her could ever fall for someone like him. Therefore, he feels that the best solution is to tease her… constantly. From dangling a spider in front of her as she walks through the classroom halls, to swapping her tea with vinegar, or spraying her with a super soaker during pool cleaning duty, Oota is just a straight-up bully that shows no remorse… all for the sake of getting her to show an expression or two.
He even enlists his friend and fellow classmate Sata to take notes on her… like how many times she’s blinked, and so forth, to try and gauge if she’s even capable of showing any form of expression. This pretty much serves as the first episode, just Oota torturing Kashiwada while his classmates and friends stand around and do nothing about it.
Worth Watching?
HARD NO – I don’t even know where to begin in talking about how terrible this show is. Shallow would be putting it mildly. Perhaps, this show only has a one-track mind as far as direction goes, but if you’re going to have a running gag, it needs to be made interesting. While the show COULD get interesting from here on out, first impressions are just about as paramount as the ending to a series, and the first impressions I received here tell me that this show is a complete waste of time.
First off, we have the one thing that I absolutely loathe… screaming at the top of your lungs and passing it off as comedy. Oota is about as loud as they come, and it’s grating on my ears. My condition aside, because he’s always screaming, all of the comedic delivery feels extremely forced. The jokes are so juvenile that they are hard to take seriously. Even when you tune your brain to accept the fact that the humor here is never going to be deep or meaningful, you’re left with staring blankly at the screen without even cracking a smirk.
Then we have Kashiwada. She’s expressionless, and this is presented over and over again. From little signs that point to her to tell us what emotions she’s truly feeling, to always staring deadpan at anything and everything, it got old fast. Sure, it was cute within the first five minutes, but that was all the time you needed to invest in this show to see the direction it was heading in.
Outside of Oota’s childish pranks and shallow backstory of how he ended up meeting Kashiwada, there is no variety to the show. Nothing interesting happened at all, and there was zero indication that the situation could change in future episodes. So, this means that this show could very well be filled with episode after episode of the same running joke of Oota trying to make Kashiwada show some sort of emotions, and when the joke already overstayed its welcome by the halfway point of the first episode, I have zero interest in sticking around to see if this show improves or goes anywhere meaningful.
This has to be one of the worst openings to a rom-com I’ve seen in quite some time. There are way better options out there. This is a show you can skip and not even feel any remorse about missing out. It was that bad.
