Thoughts on the TV Anime 'Aharen-san wa Hakarenai'

A few years ago, I read the first chapter of the original manga on Jump+ and immediately stopped reading, thinking, 'Oh, another one of those "precious" mutually-in-love hetero rom-coms in the vein of Takagi-san (or Nagatoro-san?) that are being mass-produced... how incredibly boring.'
Since such a work was getting an anime adaptation this season, I started watching it with absolutely no expectations, but... this was a surprise! Personally, it turned out to be the dark horse of the season...!!

The reason is that, at the stage of reading only the first chapter of the original, I had written it off as a one-note rom-com whose only selling point was the caricatured nature of the heroine, Aharen-san, being "unable to measure interpersonal distance." However, once I started watching the anime, I realized that the male protagonist, Raidou-kun, was actually the more dangerous one. He doesn't even change his expression at Aharen-san's bizarre behavior and accepts it entirely; in fact, he pushes the madness even further, creating a space where there is no one to play the straight man. It was a work that leaned heavily into gag comedy. I found the world where their "abnormal" personalities and words could exist freely without being denied by anyone to be very endearing. Every episode, I would laugh out loud, enjoy watching viewers on Nico Nico Douga leave comments like "That's not how it works," and cheer them on, thinking, "Go for it, do more!" I admire characters like Sofy-san from 'PriPara' who can live freely without being called out (since being called out is nothing more than the imposition of social norms) even while doing whatever they want at their own pace...

Aharen-san lying face up and sprawled out (?) on Raidou-kun's lap in the classroom was the best visual. Like with Sofy-san, I just love the image of anime characters lounging around... (Maybe I should rewatch 'Umaru-chan' or something?)

(Of course, part of why the anime was good is due to the difference in media; Aharen-san's "very quiet voice" element shines more when heard in an audio medium like anime than when read in a text-based manga. The casting of Inori Minase was also wonderful.)

And so, having discovered that it was a work much more to my liking than I had expected, I had only one wish: "Please don't become a couple...! Just stay as you are, a pair with a unique relationship that isn't reclaimed by existing labels..."
To hell with the trivial social common sense that says, "It's impossible for a man and woman who aren't dating to be stuck together daily and walk home with their arms linked"!! If the people involved don't have any doubts about it, there's no need for outsiders to judge whether it's "weird" or "not weird." That in itself is ridiculous.
I didn't want to see such "strange" people as Aharen-san and Raidou-kun eventually "fall" into the romantic norms that we viewers are familiar with—the standard path of rom-coms where they "gradually become attracted to each other, fall in love, confess, and start dating." I didn't want to see Aharen-san blushing! How solid and grotesque the "common sense" of rom-coms is.
(I felt the same way about Kitagawa-san from last season's 'My Dress-Up Darling'... It seems I'm not good at seeing unique and proud anime characters "become weak toward the person they like" (dere). "Dere" just means "becoming a state convenient for viewers to consume in a template way.")

So, although I had a vague... no, a certain conviction from the beginning, the final arc where Aharen-san starts to become conscious of Raidou-kun and they become a couple was quite tough. It has the kind of harshness where the heroine of a work you thought was pure love gets NTR'd... (No, that doesn't work as an analogy. Forget it. I actually like NTR more than pure love...)
Even so, Raidou-kun didn't show any signs of being romantically conscious of Aharen-san, at least not objectively/symbolically, and it was good that he maintained his usual deadpan expression even in the final episode. Well, if you think about it meta-ly, the heroine's blushing face is fan service for the viewers, but a male character's blushing face is "who benefits?" so it seems like a strategy is at work to not draw it. If you were to draw a male rom-com protagonist's blushing face as vividly and attractively as the heroine's, you would need a character design like Gojo-kun from 'My Dress-Up Darling.' Raidou-kun's design intent is clearly different from Gojo-kun's. He's like the producer (CV: Shunsuke Takeuchi) from the 'Idolmaster' anime—a character with a surprisingly large build, little detail on the face, and few expressions (a surrogate for the viewer). The reason I like Raidou-kun so much is that he has the appearance of a featureless eroge protagonist made for viewers to easily empathize with, yet he leaves the viewers behind with ideas and actions even more bizarre than Aharen-san's.

So, in the end, perhaps I should say it's Jump+ after all, or perhaps I should say that I wasn't entirely wrong for writing it off at the first chapter, but it was very disappointing that it was reclaimed by popular templates/social norms. It was a result that made me painfully aware of the obvious fact that the reproduction of norms is carried out under commercial artifice disguised as entertainment (or rather, it is undoubtedly entertainment, but disguised as something else), not through ethics, morality, or political thought.

Furthermore, the very fact that the work focuses on depicting "a man and woman who aren't dating being stuck together daily and walking home with their arms linked" means that even if no one plays the straight man in the story, the work implicitly positions it as something "different," something that "becomes comedy." Knowing that, I still dreamed of a glimmer of salvation, or the possibility of a paradise, in the fact that on the surface, there was no straight man, and for the two of them, they could live freely without the interference of a straight man (= defamiliarization = norms = violence). But there is no doubt that this is a dream that cannot exist even as fiction, or rather, it is a dream that cannot exist precisely because it is fiction.

Moreover, my own sensibility of thinking "it's wonderful that these 'strange' girls can exist freely while remaining strange (without it being pointed out)" is not free from norms, as I have already recognized them as "strange," and I am in the same boat as the people who see Aharen-san blushing and say "cute" or "precious." In other words, the true ideal is that the space depicted in this work exists quietly and surely in a place where there is no "work" guise/positioning—a place we can never perceive. Logically, although we who live in this world don't know it, it is possible that even now, in countless possible worlds, countless Aharen-sans and Raidou-kuns are liberated from all straight-man interventions and are freely enjoying their days together. It is impossible in principle to say that it "exists," but one can at least believe in things that cannot be spoken of. It's the kind of thing that is ruined the moment you say "I believe in it."

To add another piece of rambling, the structure where Aharen-san, who was so proud and attractive, gradually has "normal" hetero romantic norms installed in her over the 12 episodes of the anime, transforms into a "boring" character, and finally the couple is formed and the work closes (= disappears from our sight), could paradoxically be interpreted as an antithesis to romantic norms... maybe. Like, "I 'killed' one wonderful character over one cour, so I'll move on to the next." ('Funny Games'?)
...Well, the original manga will continue after this, and it wouldn't be strange for a second season of the anime to be produced, so it's a really painful and acrobatic way of looking at it...

To mention other characters, I also liked Oshiro-san, who loves Aharen-san and repeatedly stalks her (of course). Because she's a dangerous person. In the last three episodes, she was the only one in the story to "witness" the moment the Aharen-Raidou heterosexual couple was formed, and her attempt to kill Raidou-kun out of jealousy naturally made me cheer for her with all my might, "Go for it, Oshiro-san!!! Do it!!!" But well, yes, she was swayed by one thing or another. Ah, how grotesque... (I was actually groaning "Gross..." while watching the final episode).
Come to think of it, Oshiro-san in her casual clothes during that camping trip was startlingly cute, and it made me realize the charm of tall women.

The classical literature teacher, "Aware"-sensei (CV: Za-san), was... needless to say, I was terrible with her. First of all, I really hate the consumer attitude of "precious~." On top of that, in this work, by having this character perform that consumer attitude in an exaggerated way, it seems to have the effect of relativizing it at first glance, as if to say, "It's ridiculous for people to be agonizing over Aharen-san and the others, saying 'how precious'," but in reality, it is just disguising it with comedy and imposing the recommended consumer attitude of the ideal viewer of this work from the side of the work itself. The smuggling of norms through gags. That is the true identity of this teacher, and I really hated her.

Also, the tacked-on yuri elements between Ms. Aharen and her colleague Ms. Miyahira are just so Jump+, it makes me want to retch. (As expected of the great Shueisha!) For all you yuri fans out there, are you really satisfied with this kind of thing? Don't you think you're being looked down upon? (I'm sure some of you definitely do.) The way they feel 'aware' (pathos) toward the relationships of others like Aharen-san's, but then pull a clueless light novel protagonist move when it comes to the 'aware' relationships they are a part of themselves, is just, oh yeah, whatever. They were just hollow characters, convenient for the viewers' 'precious' consumption attitude.
I also didn't care for the childhood friend boy and girl in Aharen-san's class... During the camping episode, when they briefly gave off the vibe that they were already dating, I thought 'Oh?' and got my hopes up, but that fell apart immediately in the conveyor belt sushi episode that followed.
As for Aharen-san's younger brother/sister, I was confused when they first appeared, and even after that, I couldn't shake the feeling of 'Do we really need these guys...?'
The two elementary school kids in the stereotypical childhood friend hetero couple from the neighborhood are... hmmm, I love them!!! Stereotypical childhood friend hetero elementary school couples are the best!!!!! (Wait, I'm completely giving in to the norms, aren't I?)

...I feel like I've been trashing it quite a bit, but it was actually really interesting halfway through, and it remains a dark horse of the season for me... I don't have the slightest desire to read the original work, and I'm not even sure if I'd watch a second season if it came out...

I watched it.