Just to reiterate, Muchuu sa, Kimi ni. is sharing this 10-episode cour with Karaoke Iko!, which is returning for the final episode. Same author, same studio, same director – both are one-volume manga. I had no experience with Wayama Yama before Karaoke, but she’s been an awards darling and very much a buzzy mangaka for the past few years. Muchuu sa specifically was nominated for the Manga Taishou and won the Tezuka Award for short series (which is not given every year, so wow) both in 2020.
To be honest my first impression (well, that’s what these are called) is that Karaoke Iko can’t get back too soon for me. It wasn’t flawless by any means but I found it far more charming and interesting than this show. I think the buffer of the age gap protected Karaoke Iko against the worst of genre cliche, which runs roughshod over everything in Muchuu sa, Kimi ni.. I can’t speak to the question of manga vs. anime here but I found this premiere completely stilted and full-of-itself. Series which are in awe of how hilarious they are are very infrequently hilarious at all.
To the extent it matters, this one is set at an all-boys combined senior-junior high school, where a kid named Ema Jouji bemoans how uncute guys are. At the sports festival he participates in the scavenger hunt, and gets a slip with “someone kawaii” written on it. He briefly considers fetching one of the first-year middle schoolers but decides that’s too much effort, and settles on a classmate named Hayashi Miyoshi who’s tangled in the net from the obstacle course. Thereafter every time Hayashi sees Ema he asks “Am I adorable?” and we’re supposed to find that adorable.
That’s about it, really. The rest of it is various riffs on that theme, all of which fall pretty flat for me. When I see a series like this gather so much acclaim and find it so completely mediocre, the natural inclination is to wonder whether I’m missing something. Or whether the adaptation is just shitting the bed, which as I said I can’t speak to (but seems pretty unlikely). I just have to conclude I’m not the target audience for this and leave it to those who enjoy it with my compliments. See you in five weeks.
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