Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro First Impressions

“Senpai, why are you looking away? You’re supposed to look a person in the eye when they’re talking to you, aren’t you? Senpai, you’re kind of… Actually, you’re really… kind of creepy!”

About halfway through this first episode of Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san I paused the episode to go see what the genre for this series was supposed to be. It’s listed as a romantic comedy, but there is relatively little of either of those aspects in this first episode. Psychological horror might be closer to the mark. It mostly seems to be one unlikable character making another slightly less unlikable character miserable. Comedy is very subjective, so there may well be an audience for this vein of humor, but I found the experience rather to be a rather unpleasant one. The seasonal previews I read seem to suggest that this title has something of a cult following, but I can’t see myself returning for another episode of this as there is nothing in Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san’s first episode that offered up a single laugh or an iota of emotional engagement.

We only really have two characters in this first episode, the upperclassman Hachioji Naoto and his eponymous underclassman Nagatoro Hayase. Hachioji is a withdrawn student who, one day after school, finds that his regular study space in the library has been commandeered by a group of noisy female underclassmen. Frustrated by the intrusion, Hachioji inadvertently spills the contents of his bag which include a manga draft he had been working on. The girls mock the work, but one of them in particular takes note of it and stays behind to mock him to the point of crying. This is Nagatoro. The rest of the episode simply consists of her harassing, embarrassing, and toying with her senpai, as she insists on calling him. As frustrating as her bullying is, Hachioji is pretty insufferable too. He willingly plays the role of doormat and is obnoxiously quick to play into her hands. It’s an entire show of watching Charlie Brown and Lucy play football, except it’s worse than that sounds. Towards the end of the episode, Hachioji acknowledges that he doesn’t mind the abuse, so I guess at least he’s a willing participant, but I can’t envision myself getting any enjoyment out of watching where it goes from here.

The production for the show is being helmed by Telecom Animation Film, a subsidiary of TMS Entertainment. They previously worked on Tower of God, and while I was rather mixed on that series, the production values remained consistently good. I don’t really have any problem with the appearance of Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san, and in fact, on analyzing some of the still images from the episode I found they look quite nice. I think I had difficulty noticing this during the course of the episode, because I found my attention being consistently drawn to the two leads, neither of whom I had any patience for. We get the OP at the end of this first episode, and it’s a nice enough track. The visuals have a decent enough style to them… but again, I find myself being drawn out of it by the fact that the visuals depict Nagatoro torturing Hachioji. Some of the faces and reactions were good, and the closest the show came to eliciting a laugh from me was Hachioji’s reaction when Nagatoro teased him by suggesting she act as a nude model for him.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• My distaste for Hachioji may have a slight personal bias to it, as I can’t deny having entertained the tortured artist persona as a dumb high schooler, but even setting aside that aspect of disdain for my past self, he just seems obnoxious. He spends much of the opening seething about the intrusion from the girls, but never leaves to find another place to study. Something about him just constantly grated every step of the way.
• We were never given any insight to Nagatoro’s thought process during the course of this episode. A synopsis I saw elsewhere suggests that she’s providing this abuse of Hachioji’s benefit, but nothing from this first episode seemed to indicate that was a factor.
• From what I can tell, it sounds like I’m an outlier in the anime community for having avoided ever hearing of this title, but I’m prepared to go back to not knowing it exists.
• This was one of my shortest reviews in a while, but there are only so many ways for me to say, “I didn’t find the emotional torture all that funny.”