What’s this?
Quiet little Queen Aharen sits next to Raidō in class. Aharen is not that good at measuring the distance between people (or personal boundaries), and Raidō initially felt some distance between the two. Then one day, when Raidō picked up the eraser Aharen had dropped, the distance between them suddenly became uncomfortably close. From “too distant” to “too close”, Aharen is just unpredictable.
Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is based on Asato Mizu‘s romantic comedy manga series and airs on Crunchyroll Fridays.
How was the first episode?
Rebecca Silverman
Classification:
Aharen is my personal nightmare: someone with very little concept of personal space. She seems to understand it quite honestly; her voice is so amazingly calm that she almost has to be in someone’s face to be heard. She also carries some trauma from her high school days, when she gave herself so wholeheartedly to friendships that she ended up scaring potential friends, and she claims to be afraid of repeating the same mistakes now that she is In secondary school. But… is it really her? Because almost the moment Raido, who sits next to her and wants to remedy his own high school problems, expresses an interest, she’s all over him with the boundless enthusiasm for physical closeness of an average pup. Even Raido isn’t quite sure what to make of it.
I can’t decide if this is meant to be funny, sweet, or just relaxing. Possibly my confusion stems from the fact that I found the pacing of the icy episode and the resulting viewing experience somewhat mind-numbing. I could easily see how Aharen pretends to be endearingly cute: she’s physically petite and she has an endearing devotion to making her friendship with Raido work, even if she’s not particularly good at it. In addition to climbing on him, she also does things like pass/throw notes to him while he’s in the bathroom and spend hours poring over the angles of a crane game to ensure she wins a bunch of creepy duck-faced stuffed animals for him. That he’s also trying to win one for himself is pretty sweet too, and I could see this turn into a low-stakes romance that fans of Everyday Life would find very enjoyable. It’s clear that Aharen’s heart is in the right place even if she doesn’t have the experience to back up her good intentions, and indeed, since Raido doesn’t seem to object to her sitting on his lap or curling up around him for a drink. nap, maybe we shouldn’t either.
I admit I find this boring. It could certainly get better from here, as Raido learns more about Aharen, and the likely rival character that appears at the end of this episode could change the pace for the better. But with lackluster visuals and dragging progression, I don’t think I’ll have the patience to wait for it to finish.
Nicholas Dupree
Classification:
This is one of those programs where the title tells you everything you need to know upon entering. Or it would be if the powers that be hadn’t left the title romanized for some reason. The essence of this is that Aharen-san he’s indecipherable, inscrutable, and just a fucking weirdo. Almost every joke or plot development in this episode is based on that one concept. There is a small, incredibly soft-spoken girl in Raido’s new high school class, he can never tell what’s going on in her head no matter what she tries, shenanigans ensue. It’s the kind of premise that’s so sparse and simple that it can only work with perfect execution. While this anime isn’t quite there yet, at least it hits the right notes most of the time in this episode.
It all comes down to tone and timing here, and while some segments in this episode don’t quite tie together, when they do, it’s similar in tone to Tanaka-kun is always listless, where the humor arises from the combination of the casual tone and the absurd circumstances. The best thing is definitely Raido’s ever-increasing attempts to outdo Aharen’s incredibly calm voice through whatever means possible; notes, lip reading, something called “bone conduction,” and culminating in smoke signals and carrier pigeons. It’s all very silly, made all the more amusing by Raido’s unflinching stone face, looking deadly serious every second and never raising his voice.
That, more than anything, is what makes a lot of these gags work: they’d be ruined if Raido was a serious, loud-mouthed man who overreacted to Aharen’s every eccentricity, but they’re made so much funnier by the amount of stuff that goes into it. make. It works because it’s established that both characters are awkward weirdos trying to come out of their shells, so no matter how weird their antics get, they both seem to have fun and really want to be around each other. It doesn’t hurt that Aharen’s whole trick about misjudging personal space means that, to all outside observers, these two are already dating: going home together, sharing desks and textbooks, Aharen sitting on Raido’s lap when they share lunch, all the classic romantic comedies. that these two have blindly entered in a very endearing way. It’s all very cute, and while this joke might wear off, I’m hopeful that the series can build on this solid foundation and make a quiet, endearing little comedy.