This Week in Anime

Is Miss Nagatoro's Negging TOO Mean?

Jean-Karlo
Too late. They already spotted us. Now we gotta talk about Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro.

Noblesse was boring, and the earlier bits of High-Rise Invasion were frankly off-putting, but neither show was as openly dreadful and discomforting to watch as Nagatoro got sometimes. I was already dreading this show due to the contingent of fans that were itching to make this show A Thing™ this season just like what happened with Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! When nothing happened, I had hoped it was because Nagatoro had some characterful bend that set it apart. After ten episodes, it turns out: nope!

I don't want to be too mean to this show because I get it: basing an entire thing off of the appeal of a single character is basically how SNK's Athena maintained her relevance after all these years, and it's how I got suckered into Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja.

But don't make your character so despicable maybe?

Translation: this is a fetish show. And not like Manyū Hiken-chō or The Qwaser of Stigmata. This is a fetish show.

I have a closet full of skeletons that just means I have issues with denigration or being made fun of. So when the first episode shows Nagatoro having a ball while reducing the hapless senpai to tears, suffice to say I wasn't having fun.

Like, I don't care how many cars ran over however many of her pets: this is really beyond the pale. This and a few other pranks Nagatoro pulls are the kind where if the positions were reversed Senpai would very deservedly be on a few lists.

Helga G. Pataki is not a role model, Nagatoro!

If they didn't lavish so much attention on how discomforting this was for Senpai and how visibly distressed he was with Nagatoro harassing him, I could believe you. And while the show eventually shows Nagatoro toning down her crap to what even I could call "harmless ribbing," you can't unwrite what you wrote.

Full disclosure: this show activates my Brain Goblins™ in the worst way, and I already don't like "Everyone Treats Everyone Else Like Crap" as a comedic genre (which is why I didn't watch Community) so I'm working as hard as I can to be charitable here. But it still leads me to ask: where's the humor in this?

It's more of that boilerplate tsundere-comedy I already avoided like the plague back in the late-aughts. Thank God Nagatoro isn't voiced by Rie Kugumiya and shouting "Urusai urusai urusai!" over and over. But hey, congrats on having the chutzpah to bring that dead horse back to life.

I hope you like this face, because you'll be seeing it a lot.

I can give the production values credit. It's wasted on such a dumb joke, but for a series set on a sleepy town by the ocean, the show nails the vibes quite well when it decides to pull back from the main characters.

That's the one thing that makes Nagatoro stand out. What a lot of the angry Uzaki crowd didn't really get was that nobody really cared about Uzaki's proportions; the rest of the show was just dull, from a writing and visual standpoint. Nagatoro at least has production values and cinematography to help it stand out. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but I can at least point it out.

The stray Hajime no Ippo reference was a nice breather, I'll give them that.

See, if this had been the launching point for the series, I'd probably not have had such a violent reaction against it. I'd still hate Nagatoro and would cheer as she cried herself to sleep because her inability to be upfront with her feelings for Senpai drove him into the arms of a person with actual social skills, but I'd still hold this show somewhere around Vladlove in terms of "Not sure who it's for, but it sure is what it is."

As it is, it just feels less like Nagatoro and Senpai developed as characters and more like Nagatoro creator Nanashi realized that he really needed to tone down the sadism.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes," Nagatoro.

You joke, but Nanashi probably drew that before making Nagatoro!

But as can be expected, Nagatoro gets defensive over her senpai when her friends join in on the bullying that she otherwise so-enthusiastically starts. So there are a few episodes where she... tries standing up for his character? If proving that he has a porn stash is somehow "sticking up for the guy"...

Apparently, it's one of those cases where the horny funnybook actually has good writing.

Like I said, a lot of my revulsion towards this show stems from a lot of emotional baggage I deal with. But I'm still pretty unafraid to call this the worst show of the season from how little it has to offer. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so kudos for making the show you wanted to make. But I'm quietly amused that people were so ready to tilt at windmills in defense of Nagatoro and absolutely nothing came of it. I look forward to living the rest of my life without having to offer Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro a second thought.

Vertical has also brought the manga over, so if you need more of this series it's there waiting for you. I can't understand why you'd want it, but I can at least put it into your hands. I'm not your dad.