Ueno is the president of the science club at a certain junior high school. She’s a master inventor beyond her years but can’t seem to confess to her crush Tanaka. – ANN
Streaming: HIDIVE
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Necessity is the mother of invention, and Ueno’s greatest motivation is being able to confess her feelings to Tanaka, her clueless crush. Being straightforward about her emotions is too embarrassing for her, so she makes attempts at articulating her feelings by developing strange inventions that put Tanaka in a position to understand just where she’s coming from.
Her first invention is a filter that can take any dirty water and purify it to a drinkable state. She tests its power by filtering her own urine and demanding that Tanaka take a drink from the glass. Tanaka neither sees the point or gets the hint. Later, Ueno develops a device that creates an area of dark matter that obscures whatever it envelopes. She recruits Tanaka for an experiment involving the device, her skirt, and her lack of underwear. The device turns out to be a success, but Ueno’s quest to get Tanaka to see something interesting beneath her skirt turns out to be a dud.
Impressions: While this series is technically short-form (episodes are around 11 minutes long), there was enough material that I thought writing about it here might be do-able. I don’t know that a full 22-minutes could do much to help this episode’s many problems.
One of anime’s cornerstones are stories about young love, and many of those stories involve characters who are clueless about each-others’ feelings. Building a story this way is a great way to make a series last, especially for viewers who enjoy the sort of “will-they-or-won’t-they” emotional tug-of-war in their romantic stories. I’m not a huge fan of these types of anime, mostly because I’ve seen a lot of good series in which characters confess their feelings early on and still manage to find things about the relationship worthy of dramatic (or comedic) storytelling. Still, when a story is good, it’s good, even when it’s a setup that doesn’t do much for me.
The problem with Miss Ueno isn’t that its leads are both clueless in their interactions (though they really, truly are). The problem is that their unmanaged ability to talk directly past one-another morphs into cringe territory pretty early on, and Ueno’s reaction to Tanaka’s airheadedness wanders more than once into sexual harassment territory.
Ueno doesn’t have the words to tell her crush directly that she’s in love with him, so she finds incredibly awkward ways to try to show him that cross the line. The bulk of the first segment features Ueno trying to force Tanaka to drink her body fluids. She uses coercion, bargaining, physical force, and even peer pressure (through her friend) to try to make this a reality. The fact of the matter is, even though her urine’s been purified into water, Tanaka is consistently a hard “no” toward drinking it. He’s crystal clear on this every time Ueno tries to get him to say, do, and feel differently. In essence, this bit is just one long thread of harassing actions and it frankly bothers the heck out of me that this is framed as comedic.
The second segment is basically an extended ploy by Ueno to convince Tanaka to want to see her bare genitals underneath her skirt. Because of the success of her invisibility device that turns out never to be a possibility, but the mere thought of it starts to get Ueno hot and bothered. Tanaka seems to be ignorant of female anatomy and doesn’t know what could possibly exist up there that would interest him, so he’s again mostly uninterested in helping Ueno with her “experiment.”
Exhibitionism in which the person viewing it isn’t a consenting or willing participant is, to me, a form of assault. Ueno’s quest to get Tanaka to look at her bare crotch is awkward, to be sure, but it’s also really gross and out of line. It gives me the willies just thinking about it too much.
Whether Tanaka is asexual (a definite possibility) or just uninterested in Ueno romantically (a high probability), Ueno’s behavior toward him is way out of line. I think that Ueno’s ability to create and invent things out of thin air is a source of humor on its own. It could likely have been wielded in a way that was kinder to both characters rather than being perverted into a manipulation tactic aimed at a clueless guy with better things to do with his time.
This series really seems to fall into the spectrum of mean-spirited entertainment that some people have an easier time finding humor in than I do. I’m more keen to enjoy humor that lovingly picks on its characters’ personalities and habits, something that takes a while to establish and build. This type of bellowing gag-humor is difficult for me to watch in the first place, and because it doubles-down with harassment I really can’t recommend it.
Pros: The idea of a young genius inventor could be a good source for comedy.
Cons: Ueno’s actions read as coercive and harassing. There’s implied potential for sexual assault (that technically doesn’t come to pass).
Grade: D