Miyako Hoshino is a shy college student and otaku. Miyako’s younger sister Hinata, who is a fifth grader, has a classmate and friend named Hana. When they meet, Miyako falls for Hana at first sight. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Miyako is a college student with a talent for baking and sewing cute cosplay outfits for herself and her younger sister, Hinata. One afternoon, Hinata brings home a friend – Hana-chan – and Miyako is suddenly at a loss for words. Though her otaku nature has always left her shy around strangers, seeing Hana gives Miyako a serious case of the butterflies. Hana, on the other hand, is skeeved by Miyako’s behavior.
Miyako decides that she wants to become friends with Hana, and begs Hinata to invite her over to the house again. Hana happens to be very food-motivated, so Miyako offers her sweets in exchange for her mere presence. This forces Hana to override her strong self-preservation instinct. Miyako eventually convinces Hana to try on some cosplay, which turns into an impromptu photo session. Eventually, Hana decides that she can put up with Miyako’s… eccentricities if there are enough baked goods involved.
Impressions: Content warning for discussion of grooming/pedophilia.
The previous anime season hit a particularly sour note with Uzamaid!, the cringe-worthy tale of an adult woman smitten with a young girl. What I hoped would be an unfortunate one-off is now seemingly becoming a trend, because Wataten! seems more than content to hit many of the same low notes. There are a lot of broad similarities between the two that worry me, because where there are patterns there are eventually tropes; I’m not really interested in regularly wrangling with a comedy sub-genre that defines itself by featuring adults who creep on children.
If I were to look at the budding relationship between Miyako and Hana as one between two people of similar age, there would already be a lot of clearly identifiable problems with it. Miyako spends an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to convince a suspicious, unwilling Hana to participate in her antics. She bribes her with delicious treats and slowly chips away at Hana’s defenses (which are razor-sharp at the outset). Miyako essentially tries to redefine Hana’s perception of “normal” and “appropriate,” until Hana’s more keen to participate. As I said, if this were two adults we’d already be talking about consent (or lack thereof) and coercion; it’s even worse because Hana is a kid.
In fact, as should be obvious to most people reading, a lot of the actions that Miyako takes toward Hana read as predatory grooming behavior . AniFem has a good bullet-point breakdown in their review of the first episode. To put a long story short, Miyako’s personality, activities, and actions as a character fall very clearly in line with the patterns of sexual predators to the point where the creators were either purposely working off of a list, or stumbled full-force into something truly upsetting without realizing what they had wrought. I’m honestly not sure if either scenario is better or worse than the other.
Similar to Uzamaid!, what bothers me even more about Wataten! than the grown adult who’s attempting to hit on a child, are the other characters, including other adults, who seem willfully clueless as to what’s occurring right in front of their faces. Miyako and Hinata’s mother only appears briefly during this episode, but when she does she seems just about ready to deal out some well-earned punishment to her creepy college-aged daughter. One is briefly lulled into believing that at least one member of the cast might feel some responsibility to protect the vulnerable child in their midst. Instead, we discover that mom isn’t worked up over the inappropriate “friendship,” she’s just mad that Miyako gave the kids so many sweets that it spoiled their dinner. Then she hangs Miyako from the ceiling wrapped in a futon over it. Not only does she miss the point, but she’s physically abusive, to boot.
Hinata doesn’t really question the propriety of the situation either, though at least in her case I think there are excuses to be made. Kids shouldn’t feel responsible to defend others from predatory adults, nor should they be put in that position in the first place. I can also imagine that living with a sibling whose actions are inappropriate would likely serve to normalize those actions. The more I attempt to view the situation from Hinata’s point-of-view, the more I feel sorry for the very skewed view of reality she must have from living with Miyako.
This is another one of those series where I have to kind of lament the way it looks, because its soft, airy cuteness is really pleasant appealing when the grimy narrative details are wiped away. I think this style and level of craft would look great as the front-facing look of almost any other slice-of-life comedy. Instead, I’m left questioning why an episode that looks so pretty has to be so thoroughly upsetting.
There’s an understandable temptation to label this episode “not so bad” as compared to its very similar sibling from the previous anime season. Miyako’s predations are much less self-aware and she doesn’t really even seem capable of defining her feelings (in the episode they’re described as “A Funny, Squirmy Feeling,” a phrase which gives me the heebie-jeebies). I think, though, that to explain away Miyako’s inappropriate behavior by pointing to her own ignorance of its implications is worse than outright condemning a more forthright and easily-identified lolicon. When bad behavior is forgiven as eccentricity or social awkwardness it’s often inadvertently allowed to escalate.
I’m not a big fan of media that either purposely or inadvertently seems to normalize harmful behavior. While Miyako’s internal affections may never cross over to into her outer reality, the mere fact that this story takes actions that have been used to deeply harm people and reworks them into comedic entertainment is a real no-go in my book.
Pros: Aesthetically pretty.
Cons: Features grooming behavior as a source of comedy.
Grade: D