Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Tachibana and Jinguuji have been friends since childhood, but couldn’t be more different. Jinguuji is tall, handsome, and good at everything, making him a target of affection from many women. Tachibana, on the other hand, is kind of a scrub. Now in their thirties, the two fear that they’ve become old men and might never find love. Of course, a complicating factor in this is that Jinguuji has never shown an interest in any woman whatsoever and only really seems to have feelings for Tachibana, though he won’t acknowledge those feelings as romantic. And Tachibana’s deepest secret is that, in an ideal fantasy world, he’d rather be a cute blonde woman.
As Tachibana is laying drunk on the sidewalk, a goddess of love and beauty appears to whisk the two men away to another land to become heroes. She also blesses Tachibana with his ideal feminine transformation, something which startles and dismays Jinguuji. The goddess also left them with a curse, forcing them to save the world if they want it broken. As the two navigate these strange, new circumstances, one thing is certain; their feelings toward one-another are anything but straightforward… or straight.
Impressions: It’s rare to come across an anime series that could be either purely genius or absolutely terrible, depending entirely on some minor details and the general execution, but here we go. It’s also rare for me to undergo such a volatile, arcing journey as it applies to the love and hate of an anime’s central characters, but after a rocky start, I think I’m more on the side affection than anything else. It’s been a strange day, is all I’m saying.
The first two-thirds or so of this episode was a little bit of a slog, although I suspect that may be somewhat by design. Tachibana and Jinguuji are so painfully out-of-touch with their own feelings on gender relations and their obvious feelings toward one-another, that their obliviousness tends toward tedium more than once. Jinguuji in particular has some mean-spirited things to say about women, when in fact it’s actually not an entire gender’s fault that he’s not ever been personally attracted to them (how about some self-reflection, my dude). The two characters also spend a lot of time speaking in absolutes regarding men and women – something that’s more understandable in a story like Sasaki and Miyano which focuses on younger characters whose ability to navigate their own sense of the world has only just begun, and less so in a story about two grown adults in their thirties who’ve had time to become less ignorant and somehow chosen not to.
It’s in the latter portions of this episode that the characters’ blunt ignorance becomes more of a feature than a bug, as they’re forced to navigate more immediate concerns and thus give into doing the things they say they don’t want to do which they actually do (phew!). When they find themselves face-to-face with an example of the local fauna (who wants them both dead), necessity dictates that Jinguuji princess-carry Tachibana (whose low-level stats ensure that she’ll never survive on her own) away from the threat. Their faces loom close, their bodies touch… it’s like a game for them not to acknowledge what they’re feeling in that moment – an overdramatic form of romantic “chicken.” Their blushing reactions toward one-another are nothing but momentary lapses in judgment, at least as far as either of them is willing to consider.
These ding-dongs are in love, no bones about it. I’m sure the journey for them to acknowledge it will take up a few episodes, however.
Pros: After getting off to a bit of a bumpy start, this episode really comes into its own comedy-wise. The funniest moment that sticks out in my mind involves Jinguuji literally punching a hole in a hostile creature, a feat which he claims is the result of daily weight training yet wouldn’t seem out-of-place in Fist of the North Star or One Punch Man. This bit of over-the-top violence, coupled with the creatures cute-to-horrific transformation, definitely prompted a decent chuckle from me.
Cons: The downsides to this episode (and by extension, the story) are more speculative at this point than they are actually demonstrated at all. For all that this story premise deals with gender and sexuality, I wonder just exactly what, if anything, it actually has to say about those subjects. I made a big error in judgment earlier and decided to read the Crunchyroll comment thread below the episode, and already there are no-fun-niks with their undies in a bunch over the fact that some people are choosing to interpret Tachibana’s situation as that of a trans woman (despite the fact that the character professes the desire to become a woman explicitly while drunk – a mental state in which people tend to say and do things without a filter). If this is simply a kooky comedy set-up, then what’s the point? To make fun of people or to portray the thought that people could be happy as another gender as a joke? To “trick” two characters into a same-sex relationship in some painfully convoluted way? I would certainly hope not. It’s really the one major thing I’m wary about, because the story hasn’t gotten far enough to present any sort of thesis statement yet.
Content Warnings: Fantasy violence (comically graphic). Alcohol use/drunkenness. Messy gender opinions.
Would I Watch More? – At this point I sort of have to, huh? I’m kind of curious about where things go from here and whether my misgivings will be confirmed, but I was eventually charmed by the goofiness of the protagonists and their absolutely bonkers hijinks. A second peek can’t hurt, right?
