×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide
Tomo-chan Is a Girl!

How would you rate episode 1 of
Tomo-chan Is a Girl! ?
Community score: 3.9



What is this?

Tomo and Jun have been best buds since they were little kids, but now that they're in high school, Tomo wants to be more than friends...too bad Jun sees her as 'one of the guys.' Tomo may be a tomboy, but she's determined to prove to Jun that she's a woman, too.

Tomo-chan Is a Girl! is based on Fumita Yanagida's manga and streams on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

Note: Our reviewers were provided a two-episode screener of Tomo-chan Is a Girl!


How was the first episode?

Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

As somebody who grew up with crummy teen comedies about “unattractive” girls getting girly makeovers to win over lunkhead guys, I spent a good portion of this premiere waiting for that particular shoe to drop. It's just the formula I've been conditioned to expect, and even though the titular Tomo is more of a raucous jock than a nebbish bookworm, I've also seen enough anime be actively hostile to any female character with an even slightly out-of-the-ordinary body type to figure something similar was coming here.

But lo and behold, these first two episodes went down pretty smoothly. There are still some very basic, baseless assumptions at play about what being seen “as a girl” means, but it's presented more like a bunch of dumb teenagers figuring out the vocabulary for their feelings than any narrative-supported essentialism. As far as both the show and the other characters are concerned, it's pretty cool that Tomo's the kind of girl who can bench press a motorcycle.

Rather, it's Tomo's internalized insecurities – along with her clueless crush – that push her to assert her girlhood awkwardly, and her misguided attempts to get his attention fuel most of the comedy. Tomo herself is the quintessential dumb jock but also is friendly and easygoing, only ever getting worked up over Jun's inability to take a goddamn hint, and Rie Takahashi goes absolutely HAM with her vocal performance. I also appreciate that Jun has a personality of his own, rather than being a generic, nice dude love interest, and that the two have a solid rapport as friends. There's even some implication that he's actually very aware of Tomo's feelings and is acting clueless to keep from changing their friendship. It's a solid hook that can be iterated in many ways and makes for an easy pairing to cheer on as the show continues.

Honestly, the funniest bits of these episodes were the parts with Tomo or Jun interacting with other characters rather than each other. My favorite dynamic so far is Jun and Misuzu's genuine loathing for each other that they only put a pause on where Tomo is concerned. I also died laughing at the pair of mean girls trying to pick a fight with Tomo and the spiraling misunderstandings that followed. The show is very generous with introducing its extended cast quickly, which serves it well, allowing a more extensive range of gags outside the central relationship.

Visually, things are modest but adequate. Gags are pretty simple, and there's some awkward stiffness occasionally (the show's one attempt at boob jiggle is, uh, not great), but it gets the job done. It's more the vocal performances and music that sell or punctuate punchlines, keeping things moving quickly. It won't compare to the heavyweights of the Anime RomCom canon, but it's serviceable, and considering how flat some 4-koma comedy adaptations can be, I'll take workmanlike over incompetent any day.

These first two episodes are pleasant and essentially free of the gender essentialism you might expect from the premise. We might have a solid pick for the season if it can keep that up. Though this is probably a series best watched spaced out – just two episodes in a row started to wear the comedic violence shtick thin, and I imagine binging it would be way worse.


James Beckett
Rating:

Last season, Akiba Maid War provided an expert lesson on how far you can take a one-joke premise if that joke is clever/stupid/ridiculous enough. Now, Tomo-chan Is a Girl! seems to be an inverse example of how limited your series' potential can be if its one joke is just lame. It's a shame, too, because I really wanted to like the first couple of episodes of Tomo-chan a lot more than I did, but I think this is one of those anime that is going to have to work really hard to overcome some of the inextricable flaws of its core concept.

Now, I am neither a woman nor Japanese, so I can't truly speak to the complicated and nuanced relationships that characters like Tomo must have with her country's views on gender identity and expression. I don't think it is a particularly hot take, however, to say that “Main Female Character is a Tomboy Who Can't Attract the Attention of the Boy She Likes Because She Doesn't Present as Feminine Enough” isn't exactly the freshest of premises in this twenty-third year of the new millennium. I don't think it's necessarily an offensive setup for Tomo and Junichiro's romantic hijinks—at least, so long as the show doesn't eventually settle on Tomo having to become a “real girl” to finally win over Junichiro—but it's well-worn enough to demand just a bit of creativity and ingenuity. Plus, the show doesn't do itself any favors when it puts Tomo in a situation like getting groped by a pervert on the train and then proceeds to uncritically have Tomo conclude that she shouldn't punch the asshole in the face because it might hurt her girly-rep with Junichiro. That particular plot point is a little gross.

For her part, Tomo is a likable enough lead, especially since Rie Takahashi is giving it her all in the vocal department. The other characters in the ensemble I am less enthusiastic about. Junichiro plays well enough as the dumb but ultimately well-intentioned object of Tomo's probably requited affections, but he's not exactly brimming with comic energy or romantic chemistry. Misuzu is fine as the stoic and scheming best friend/wingwoman, but I think the character should be funnier than she is. As for Carol, the jealous airhead that gets introduced in the second episode…I'm honestly not sure what the show is doing with her. She kind of sucks.

You might as well rename this show to Tomo-chan is a Letdown. Hopefully, there will be a series to pick up the mantle for this season's romantic comedy to beat, but for my money, Tomo-chan ain't it.


Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

This anime has a simple premise. A tomboy has come to realize she's in love with her longtime best friend—but he cannot see her that way (to an absolutely absurd degree). It's built around that single joke, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have the potential to be much more. When you think about it, this is a great setup to challenge social norms about what it means to be “girly” while exploring that often difficult jump from friends to lovers. Unfortunately, this first episode aims almost exclusively for the lowest hanging comedic fruit—Tomo being both “un-girly” and violent and Jun being oblivious to the extreme.

The addition of Misuzu keeps this first episode from feeling too one-note and repetitive. Misuzu is in an odd position. She is Tomo's only female friend—and truly seems to love and care for Tomo (perhaps even romantically). However, she's torn between helping Tomo with her crush and hindering it. Partly this is due to jealousy (she knows that Tomo will drop her in a heartbeat the moment she and Jun hook up), but part of it is just because of how much she has come to hate Jun since the time the two of them were kids together. Misuzu doesn't see Jun as worthy of Tomo.

Meanwhile, Jun dislikes Misuzu because, while he and Tomo are meatheads, Misuzu has both brains and a skilled enough tongue to make it so that she never has to take the fall. This makes for an odd, if not disturbing, dynamic between the two. Misuzu constantly verbally assaults Jun in a way he can understand but can't contend with, so he responds physically. It gives the whole anime an uncomfortable duality: Sometimes it's silly nonsense as Tomo tries to make Jun see her as a woman, while other times, it's two people being truly spiteful toward each other through mental attacks and physical violence.

So even one episode in, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this one. Regarding the core joke, I worry that it will quickly overstay its welcome. However, the character dynamics of those outside the core pair—and the potential social commentary of the series—make me think that this one might be more than a simple one-trick pony. We'll just have to see.


Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Is he oblivious? Or is he just trying really, really hard not to notice? That's the question that is hovering behind all of Tomo and Jun's interactions in this early part of this series based on the manga of the same name. Tomo is convinced that Jun, her male best friend since they were little, has no idea that she's actually a girl, and she desperately wants him to be aware. She's not quite sure how to go about it though, and you kind of get the sense that that's just fine with him. After all, if he acknowledges that Tomo is a girl, then he has to acknowledge that he might have feelings for her that you don't have for someone who is just your best friend, gender notwithstanding.

And actually, things might be working pretty well for him in his obliviousness, feigned or otherwise. After all, if he pretends not to know she's a girl, he can get away with things like a lot more physical contact, although slapping her on the ass is probably a bridge too far no matter what. Tomo of course doesn't see it that way, and that only enhances the push-and-pull comedy that is this story's bread and butter – even if both Tomo and Jun were on the same page, they might be in completely different books. That's something that Tomo's friend and Jun's apparent sworn enemy Misuzu would like to take care of. She's been either the third wheel or the instigator from the start, and whether it's because she is tired of listening to Tomo rant about Jun or because she just enjoys messing with people, she has appointed herself the official arbiter of their relationship. Neither Jun nor Tomo appear to approve of her methods, and whether you find Misuzu a fun piece of the story or someone who is just a little bit too close to being mean really depends on how you interpret the reasons behind her actions. She's abrasive, that's for sure.

Although the manga this series is based on isn't particularly old, it does have some of the staler tropes of this genre in play. Chief among them is the fact that Tomo's default reaction is to hit June; There is perhaps some excusing this by the fact that both of them have trained in her family Dojo, but his actions rarely merit the beatings that she doles out. There's also a lot of yelling in this, so if your preferred brand of anime isn't the kind where they yell every other line at top volume, that's just something to be aware of. But this seems to be a pretty faithful adaptation of the source material thus far, and it doesn't have that disjointed feel that anime versions of four-panel manga can fall prey to. It's a fun and sweet story, and I think it'll be worth sticking around to see how the adaptation pulls it off.


Caitlin Moore
Rating:

I can pinpoint the exact gag where Tomo-chan Is a Girl! won me over. It was about the halfway point of the first episode, and I had spent the runtime up until that point wondering if Junichiro sincerely did not realize that Tomo was, in fact, a girl. They were walking together in the rain and Tomo had, through shenanigans and happenstance (as romantic comedies tend to go), gotten soaked clean through her clothes, which were now clinging to her skin (as wet clothes tend to do). Jun took one look at her ample, rain-soaked bosom, thrust the umbrella into her hand, and fled in sheer terror. It was at that moment I understood what Tomo-chan Is a Girl! is all about. Rather than a story where a tomboyish girl decides to undergo a Breakfast Club-style makeover in order to impress some undeserving Potato-suke (thank you to predictive texting for that one), this is a story about two people who have known each other for a long time who realize their feelings, and thus their friendship, are about to change. Tomo wants to embrace it and have him treat her like he would other girls their age. Jun, on the other hand, is fighting it and pretending that everything is the same as it always was, but since this is a romcom, sooner or later he's going to have to accept that maybe he wants to smooch his best friend.

It's a bit horny, but in a real way rather than simple fan service, and highlights what I liked most about the two episodes: that Tomo, Jun, and their friends really do come across as people who have known each other a long time and have histories that inform their interactions. It's not that boys and girls can't be friends, it's that hormones and a growing interest in romantic relationships can make matters a lot more complicated. Jun and Misuzu needling one another makes sense, given their revelations mentioned in the second episode, and their brattiness is either comical or can inject tension, depending on what the scene calls for. The other secondary characters, who have gotten to know the main characters more recently, come across a bit more shallow, but that doesn't mean they're not entertaining. Carol Olston, who is foreign, busty, and a weirdo, is guaranteed to garner a fan following of her very own.

Plus, it's nice to have a shonen romcom where the male love interest is actually reasonably attractive! The vast majority of them, even the good ones, hyperfocus on protagonists who are, by canon, fully average-looking. Junichiro may be a dumbass, but he's tall and well-built from doing karate for years. Tomo is a cutie too, with an athletic body of her own. There's an ecchi element to it, but not to an unpleasant or distracting degree, and a lot of the hornier jokes are grounded in reality rather than a thin pretense to show off boobs and thighs. I too wear shorts under dresses because I can't seem to break my habit of sitting with my legs open, which brings me to how careful a line Tomo-chan Is a Girl! walks with regard to gender norms, mostly successfully. It's not that Tomo wants to be girlier but can't, like I worried would be the case. She seems to be, for the most part, content with her own gender presentation, and when she says she wants Jun to treat her like a girl, she means he wants her to see her as a romantic prospect and someone to be cherished.

While I've reached a point where I generally prefer anime about adult characters, sometimes it's nice to have a series where I can vicariously relive the pangs of adolescence in a safe and structured environment (as opposed to the messy, fight club-esque, totally unsafe experience of actually living it). Tomo-chan Is a Girl!'s balance of sincerity and irreverence seems like a good way to go about it.


discuss this in the forum (315 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history

back to The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide
Season Preview Guide homepage / archives