Spring 2019 First Impressions – Amazing Stranger

Nona is a bishōjo character figure that the young male otaku office worker Haruto bought and she suddenly comes to life, and begins moving and talking on her own. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA (Episodes are 12.5 minutes in length)

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Nona is a space explorer, or at least that’s the premise of the anime in which her character stars. During one of her quests, she disguises herself as a doll in the workshop of a giant carver. When she awakens, however, she finds herself in the home of a very different giant.

Haruto is a work-from-home programmer with an otaku’s spirit, and Nona is the star of his favorite anime. He bought a character figure as a show of his devotion, but he never expected for it to come to life. After some misunderstandings, Haruto and Nona strike a deal; he’ll help Nona explore the “giants” of planet Earth if she’ll allow him to accompany her on her mission.

Impressions: Otaku fandom has been a favorite subject of anime and manga since the days of Otaku no Video, as otaku continue to find themselves in the unique position to do some self-examination of their habits, tastes, and hobbies. Some of these musings on Japanese fan culture are more critical than others, but many more of them seem more focused on enrapturing an otaku audience by providing a mirror into that fandom’s particular desires.

Amazing Stranger opens with main character Haruto complaining about his lack of desire toward interacting with real-life human women. He puts “2D” anime women on a pedestal; they’re more desirable because his interactions with them will only ever be one-sided and idealized and they lack the messy emotional components of real flesh-and-blood humans. There’s a lot to unpack here, and little of it positive. When I consider what “requirements” I have for people interacting with me, I think they’re pretty simple: speak to me as an equal, don’t assume I’m ignorant, don’t call me names, and don’t immediately try to strike up a romantic interaction – we’ll likely get along cordially without too much work. This weird attitude that women are too complicated to understand has always bothered me, as it seems to be the purview of people who are simply unwilling to see women as human beings.

That seems to be the base-line position where we start in Amazing Stranger; Haruto doesn’t “get” women, so the universe it its infinite wisdom blesses him with one who’s life-like, though not made of flesh and organs. One who embodies an idealized favorite character whose personality is informed more by fiction than by fact. And, conveniently, one who’s small enough to fit in a pocket or grasped in a hand; though her robo-body is enhanced and weaponized, there’s little question about who has the physical upper-hand in the relationship if it really came down to it.

There’s an uncomfortable sequence that unfolds once Haruto starts to get a good look at Nona. He realizes that she’s a “cast-off” figure – one with removable clothes. His curiosity and his desires get the best of him, as Nona (who we know to be quite conscious of what’s happening) becomes more and more unsettled and embarrassed. As her self-preservation instincts kick in, the scene is framed as wacky and funny – as we know, part of the fun of owning figures is seeing how detailed they are, including those sorts of details. It’s one thing to indulge oneself and yet another to watch from the outside as an anime with a fantasy-fulfillment scenario at its core incorporates and affirms elements of humanity’s poor behavior and tries to convince the audience to laugh. It’s not particularly successful here.

When I think about what it means to be an otaku, I often think of the positive things that have kept me in the fandom. Interacting with other like-minded individuals is a big one, and I’ve met many a friend and even my spouse through anime fandom. Sure, some of us can be socially-awkward, and we tend to spend a lot (like… a lot) of our income toward our passions, but in the grand scheme of things I have warm feelings toward being an anime, manga, and video game fan. So it bums me out when such a large portion of media featuring fans focuses on the negative and assumes (and by some interpretations tacitly allows) the worst of us as individuals to spring forth and become representative of the whole.

This series is not unsalvageable, but it makes the same poor decision that so many other anime choose in that it leads off with cheap shock humor and bad behavior in order to get attention. It’s very frustrating to me, especially as a fan who sees fandom as positive force rather than a socially-isolating one.

Pros: There’s a little bit of otaku humor that rings true, including a moment describing the fan’s ability to spend a ton of money on what they enjoy.

Cons: The humor relies on some crummy assumptions about otaku, assumptions about women, and some gross-out grope-y situations.

Grade: C-