Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re embarking on a new adventure, as we check out the first episode of the spring season’s Please Put Them On, Takamine-san. I’m frankly not sure what we’re in for here; by all accounts the production appears to be your garden variety adolescent romcom, with the overtly horny twist of a heroine who can rewrite reality by changing her underwear.
Presumably this device will initially be used to enforce a kind of unwilling intimacy on our leads, the classic “only you know my secret” tension that inspires the initial bonds of stories ranging from Bakemonogatari to My Monster Secret. And of course, as a general device, this sort of Groundhog’s Day time reversal almost inevitably facilitates themes of learning to live in the moment, to see mistakes as happy accidents, and no longer fret about seeking the “perfect path” through life. But what’s the point in speculating when we can find out for ourselves? Let’s get to it!
Episode 1
We open on a horny pan up our presumed heroine, with a particular focus on her immense thighs. I suppose it’s no surprise that a show centered on taking off and putting on panties would revel in thighs
Takamine Takane is her name, a title straight from the Oregairu school of character naming
She’s top in grades, sports, and apparently personality, as she was elected student president. Anime certainly loves this “princess and the pauper” high school narrative, which of course feels naturally validating to those who see themselves as social underdogs, and would like to believe a single quirk of fate might make them best friends with the school idol
Of course, this need not be framed in such cynical terms; clashes of characters from different strata of society, even a society as condensed as high school, are simply natural fuel for drama and personal development
The pyramid of high school society is listed as “Jocks->Sidekicks->Slackers->Targets.” One thing I liked about Oregairu was how directly it challenged this sort of framing, emphasizing that everyone was more complex than a bitter, superficial analysis of social dynamics might indicate
Our lead is Shirota Koushi. He’s a loner who’s last in both sports and academics
Ah, looks like we’re in for the classic “I tripped and fell into your boobs.” Even Eva had one!
“Become My Closet”
Shirota is eating lunch in the athletic shack when Takane pops in and starts changing. Oh hey, they’ve actually got nipples in this production
Sadly not much to say about the show’s direction and art design so far; it’s all pretty strictly functional stuff, in the modern post-layouts style of simply placing characters in center frame against a CG background. The visual equivalent of never actually describing the scenery
Takane gets less than a hundred on her test, and proceeds to drop her panties in response
Alright, we finally get some visual flourishes for the introduction of her power – a butterfly of neon lights flies into a field of timepieces that is then complimented by a neon linework rose, which then swiftly reverses its form. The butterfly and rose, both natural symbols of beautiful transformation and impermanence
Shirota returns a few seconds into the past, and Takane gets a perfect score this time
Whoof, some of this character art is rough. Shirota has tremendous difficulty staying on-model as he confronts Takane in the student council room. Though I suppose Shirota’s face is not the point of this production
Takane takes his accusations in stride, declaring they’ll have a “productive conversation” about it. Her archetype is a common one – the ice queen who only thaws in the presence of our audience-insert lead. And yes, at this point I feel pretty comfortable assuming our lead is an audience insert, not an intentional character study. Not really seeing anything here beyond your garden-variety ecchi with minimal production values
Oh my god, that butterfly sequence is actually bank footage they’re going to reuse multiple times per episode. Gotta get to twenty minutes somehow, I suppose
“I suppose it’s no surprise your brain froze up. You were squeezing the breast of the school’s most beautiful girl, after all.” Such naturalistic dialogue
“This is my ability – ‘a maiden that not been defiled – Eternal Virgin Road.’” These particularly horny productions can get extremely weird about purity, presenting a fantasy of desired femininity that is simultaneously utterly chaste yet incredibly sexual – the Madonna-whore paradigm in one. Sexual confidence and availability would naturally imply experience, and perhaps even raise the specter of the audience insert being abandoned – as such, this fantasy demands the object of desire be extremely horny and available around the audience insert specifically, but otherwise entirely oblivious to sexual matters. This sort of “caged sex object” allure is the same instinct that conjures such fantasies as anime’s many incestual romances, or the infantile heroines common to ‘00s visual novels
Incidentally, all of this exposition is character-bereft and simply bad storytelling, but I think we’re past the point of critiquing this show as a theoretically coherent drama, rather than a sequence of psychoanalytically fertile fantasies
“Those who’ve seen my naked breasts will remember the memory of what happened.” As I said, it’s a fantasy of simultaneous sexual availability and exclusivity
“I’m sure that’s hard for you to fathom when 95% of your life is a mistake.” I do like her extreme self-regard and pettiness. It’s both funny and telling that her explanation for why she has this magical ability is “well, I obviously deserve it”
Really leaning on Game of Thrones-style sexposition here, as she monologues about the particulars of her ability with her breasts hanging out
Also a nice texture and color weight effect for these flashback images, even if the edges are far too obviously cut with a digital erase tool
Beginning to wonder how I’m going to screencap this episode without getting delisted by Google Ads. She’s had her shirt open this entire monologue
We at least now have context for Takane’s question – she asks him to become her closet not because they actually have some kind of special connection, but because she’s so self-centered that she assumes Shirota has nothing better to do than support her petty time travel adventures
“Because you understand my ability, you’re the only one who can do this job.” A key part of this fantasy, contriving a reason why “it can only be you”
“As a ‘one of them’ type, people barely notice you exist. By becoming my closet, you can become an ‘only one’ type.” Takane literally explains the particular fantasy being realized here. Her words reflect another issue with this sort of myopic fantasy – all the characters tend to speak in the same voice, operating from the same set of social assumptions as the presumed audience. Again, Oregairu was explicitly about dismantling this sort of bitter myopia
Takane ultimately forces the issue by setting up a situation where it looked like he was assaulting her, thus forcing him to be complicit. Oof, that trope – there’s a whole bunch of incel fantasy with “the threat of false rape accusations” centered as one of the great Evils of Women, with Shield Hero providing an easy, deeply repellent example
“Is that an appropriate tone to take with your owner?” Unsurprisingly, we’re also going for a bit of a master-slave roleplay thing here, which of course also provides our protagonist a mountain to climb in terms of winning Takane’s respect
“You do realize I could make it so I didn’t help you at any time, right?” So then, can she like… infinitely reverse any decision she has made, regardless of when she made that decision? Shit, I’m probably already thinking about these mechanics more deeply than the author did
We end with Takane talking about how Shirota’s “gentlemanly side hasn’t changed,” gesturing towards the apparent childhood memory they shared that Shirota can’t remember (likely due to Takane’s ability), but which will undoubtedly serve as the root of her sincere infatuation with him. Not hard to plot these things out
And Done
Well, that certainly was your garden variety ecchi! Totally inert in terms of writing and art design, awkwardly straying into some misogynistic assumptions regarding both men and women, and ultimately serving almost solely as a vehicle for watching Takane take her clothes off. Not really much to dig into there; the psychological hangups this show gestures towards are endemic to otaku media at large, with this whole Madonna-whore complex and issue of “ownership” extending from old romance VNs to modern isekai. Folks Be Horny, and they will express that horniness through indulgent art that often doesn’t reward analysis beyond “yep, this artist sure is horny and has common hangups about gender.” And so each season’s horny also-rans wind their way to the great horny sea.
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