I feel a great need to wear surgical gloves as I type out this review, for fear of the shame trembling out from my fingertips and leaving a residue on my keyboard. Indeed, I've used this keyboard to lambaste a great variety of anime, and regardless of the words I've chosen, I have always taken to these reviews with a measure of pride. However after finishing Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san, I looked down at these keys, lovingly decorated with the vinyl Harry Potter stickers I bought on Etsy last year, and felt tangible embarrassment for the first time. For a moment, I couldn't believe that it's actually my job to watch and write about crap like this. I publicly set the show to 'dropped' because I didn't want my co-workers to see me watching it. Maybe I need a break. Or maybe the industry as a whole needs one, because I weep at the thought of the collective time it's wasted with series such as this.
Let me skip right to the apotheosis of this review: This show is cheap smut in everything but name. While there are a handful of self-deluding holdouts who pretend Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san has comedic value or narrative worth, the overwhelming majority of people who watch this show do so because they like the idea of being emasculated by an imperious woman. I've admittedly shared a similar fantasy since finishing Living History (2003), but that was an incidental, natural reaction to a stellar book. Nagatoro is, conversely, a shameless treadmill of fantasy-enabling gestures with no goalpost or meaning. From start to finish, the intended way to enjoy this show is to project yourself onto the frail, insecure, and utterly doomed male protagonist as he is incessantly tortured by a salacious girl. It subsists entirely upon that preexisting interest, and never once dares to venture beyond it.
Simply put, it is a 12 episode-long lobotomy and it would be a waste of time to write about any particular scene because they all consist of the same premise: Nagatoro teases “senpai”, and a mistake or a misunderstanding results in the teasing being slightly more lewd than she intended. Roll credits. That's it, genuinely. There is no further context to be extracted from this shameless carnival of a series. I've covered it all.
For all intents and purposes, that's my review. There is, however, a pressing matter that deserves additional study. I am of course referring to the blistering controversy surrounding the show's localization.
For the love of god, leave me alone. I know already. I had to watch for three days and nights as you animals argued about whether or not that specific localization choice counts as a war crime. I nearly ripped my eyelids off when my former friend Esposito drunkenly called me to ramble about “ethics in anime localization” because he was so pissed off about it. Let me clue you all in on a really scary fact: You have every reason to be worried about localization, because Moscow has been influencing it for years. I have seen some extremely malignant and untrue lines about the United States in anime subtitles, such as “It's an illegitimate settler state” and “their infrastructure sucks gorilla balls” (slightly paraphrasing). To spread their propaganda, hostile agencies target huge media platforms with undiscerning audiences, and anime is #1 in that category, closely followed by Marvel “movies”.
But the thing that finally spurs you all to action is a character in this dumpster-fire of a show saying "Sus"? I don't know who or what is responsible for that one insignificant line, but I can promise you that it is, cosmically, the least significant issue you could ever have with subtitles. You need to be worried about the real problems, like unknowingly reading anime subs funded and influenced by notorious Russian mob-boss Semion Mogilevich. Ever wonder why you started humoring dangerous, economy-destroying ideas like nationalizing the hospitality industry after watching Little Witch Academia? You are not immune to propaganda. Direct your vigilance to a rational place.
Despite all my issues with Nagatoro, I can still recommend the show to the emotionally immature young men who comprise its target audience, although I'm not sure how they'd ever get around to it with so many Marvel movies and first person shooter games keeping them busy. As for me, I'm going to wash my hands of the show, because it's bloody dreadful. Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san gets a fat and definitive 3/10 from me.
Please don't watch it.
651 out of 939 users liked this review
