Anime Review: GaCen Shoujo to Ibunka Kouryuu

When I heard the premise for GaCen Shounjo to Ibunka Kouryuu (Cultural Exchange with Game Center Girl), all I could think about was another gaming-centric romance show that I loved, Hi-Score Girl. The art style also looked pretty similar, so onto the To Watch pile it went! Now that the first episode is done and over with, did it live up to what I considered to be the greatest geek culture romance story that I’ve experienced so far?

Let’s Go!

The Story

Lily is wandering around the streets of the city. The people seem like these far-off creatures that are beyond her reach, but in the midst of the darkness, she finds a beacon of light… an arcade! She steps inside and tries her luck at a claw game, but she cannot nab the stuffed koala toy that caught her eye. One of the game center’s employees, a boy named Renji, witnesses this. Three hours pass, and she’s still there, so he offers to help her out and win the prize. He gives it to her, but a problem arises… this girl only speaks English! He tries hard to think of what to say and then notices a poster on the wall. Figuring it aligns with his country’s version of the holiday, he gives her the bear and wishes her a Happy Valentine’s Day!

She comes back the next day and wins a koala coffee mug from the claw machine and gives it to him along with a Happy Valentine’s Day card. When Renji looks up what it means in England, he spits his coffee out, as it was seen as a love confession. He stays up rather late and translates Japanese into English, writing out a letter for her in a notebook; however, when he arrives at the Game Center to meet her, she freaks out and runs away from him. After chasing her down, he gives her the notebook and she reads it. In there, it states that he cannot fall in love with her because he doesn’t know anything about her. She then stands and proclaims that she will make him fall in love with him, but since it’s in English, he doesn’t know what she said. She says her name is Lily and says she will see him tomorrow.

In that moment, a story of romance begins, one where the two of them will become close, with Renji learning how to speak English, all themed around an arcade… or so the anime leads you to believe, but while the arcade is involved, it breaks down into a typical episodic show.

The Characters

Renji Kusakabe

Simply put… Renji is a college student who works part-time at a game center. He happens upon Lily, who needs help with a crane machine, so he gets the thing she was after. Renji develops some admiration for her and uses her as an excuse to try to learn English so that he can communicate with her; however, he doesn’t want others, including his younger sister Aoi, to get the wrong idea, so he (poorly) disguises himself whenever Aoi shows up, transforming into an alter ego version of himself. Apparently, the characters are super dense because they can’t tell that it’s him when all he did was slick his hair back and put on a pair of sunglasses. There isn’t much depth to Renji as a character, as what you see is what you get with him, although he does go out of his way to try to befriend Lily, bringing them close together.

Lily Baker

Lily Baker is from England, so when their family comes to Japan, she doesn’t know any Japanese. She can only speak in English, which becomes the series’ main gimmick. When she meets Renji, it inspires her to learn Japanese so that she can become closer to Renji and communicate with him properly. Over time, she develops a romantic style of admiration for him, which is kind of a weird issue in and of itself (She’s 13!). Because she has a love for video games, she ends up spending a lot of time at the game center, where she eventually meets a rival/friend, Karin. Whether you find Lily cute is up to how well you can tolerate Japanese Engrish because there is a LOT of it in this show.

Art, Animation, & Sound

I will say that the show has a unique look to it. It’s almost chibi style, but not. It’s like half chibi, half shonen? I think that’s the best way to describe it, but it certainly uses a wide and bright color palette for the majority of its episodes. Even in the darkness of night in the final episode, we get the traditional fireworks scene that adds the color that was subtracted. Even without that, though, the glowing lights and lanterns at the festival added a nice ambiance. It might be a love-it-or-hate-it art style, but I thought it was cute and fit the theme of the show well, so good job to Nomad for nailing the aesthetics.

One thing I will say about the art style, though, is that there isn’t a lot of shading used on the characters, so they kind of look a bit flat, but while that would be a negative in almost any other show, it kind of fits the style and the vibe of what they were going for here.

Animation-wise, I can’t say that there is much to write home about in this show. While it wasn’t bad, per se, it wasn’t anything that was going to blow your mind. There was some obvious use of CGI in some areas, which didn’t quite mesh well with the art style, but nothing that was completely unforgivable like 2016 Berserk. It passes the mustard in that sense.

Soundtrack-wise, if you’ve seen one cutesy rom-com, then you know what to expect from the soundtrack. Nothing to write home about, and it’s going to be one of those you either love or hate. Of course, with it being a gaming-themed show, expect some of those typical trope-ish gaming sound effects here and there.

Overall Thoughts

If you noticed, I didn’t touch on all of the characters in this series because, if I’m being honest, I didn’t watch it in full. I got to about Episode 7 when I just started skimming through the episodes to get a gist of what was happening. Needless to say, that’s not a good thing because it means that the show fails to hold someone’s interest. I feel it didn’t hold mine because it fell into the same pitfalls that a lot of generic slice-of-life rom-com shows like this fall into. It starts off with a unique premise, then it dwindles into a standard situational rom-com that doesn’t do much to entertain you.

The broken Engrish was funny at first as it added a certain level of charm to the show, but the novelty wore off fast. Being infatuated with a koala mascot and theming several jokes and episodes around it was a risky move because either people will love the cuteness of it and attach themselves to the joke, or people will find it annoying and wish they would add more variety. I was in the second camp, and typically, running gags or themes like that don’t have a middle ground.

I get that this show wasn’t going to be super serious and that it was meant to be a comfy and cute rom-com, but I still can’t look past the fact that the show tried to pair up a college student with an underage 13-year-old. Even if they tried to make it innocent, the notion was still there. Besides, isn’t it creepy enough that a college student was even hanging out with a 13-year-old, to begin with? Take away the romance aspect of it, and that’s still rather uncomfortable. It probably would have worked better if Lily had been a family member, and he was trying to show her how to have fun, and Lily developed more of a familial admiration of Renji… that would have been cute, but to fully suggest romantic feelings, that’s a bit much.

In any event, if you’re into campy, cute shows like this, it’s going to be a decent watch at best; otherwise, I would say go ahead and skip this one. There are many better gaming-themed romances out there, like Hi-Score Girl and Wotakoi (if you’re looking for opposite ends of the demographic spectrum).