When Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san (translated to Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro) first aired, it got a huge reaction. Being current on the manga, I anticipated this happening. Nagatoro got, by my estimation, the biggest reaction out of the anime base (due to an individual girl) ever since the first episode of DanMachi and Hestia back in 2015. Thankfully, the hype in conjunction with its beginning didn't last long. Sure, it still was one of the most popular shows of the Spring season, and will probably be one of the most popular shows of the year, but it was more well-received than I thought it would be.
The setup to Nagatoro is simple—one day, while Senpai (he has a name, but it’s not important to know) is doing his homework in the library, pages from a manga he’s drawing fall with his bag, being picked up by Sakura (one of Nagatoro’s friends). While Sakura, Gamo, and Yoshi make their snarky remarks about it and then leave afterward, Nagatoro stays behind and psychologically tortures him until he cries. In the second part of the first episode, she invades his sanctuary, the Art Clubroom, and makes him cry again after tricking him into puckering up for a 'kiss'. After all of that, plus being pushed into an aqueduct, he still tells Nagatoro that he enjoys her company and doesn’t mind talking to her. Life, as we know it for Senpai, becomes a lot weirder in the following days.
Nagatoro has a small cast of characters. Senpai and Nagatoro are the two main characters, and the only other four characters of note are Nagatoro’s three friends (Gamo, who is the most assertive of the three; Yoshi, who is by default the nicest, but also the most dimwitted of the three; and Sakura, who pretends to be friendly to men to get things from them), and the president of the Art Club, who only becomes relevant in the back half of the anime. The small cast lends itself to us seeing every character, even side characters, a lot, which is great since all of them are lovable, even when they’re being mischievous on purpose.
Going off of the first episode, you might be wondering ‘Why the hell would anyone ever watch this?’, and I get your point. If all twelve episodes of the anime and all of the manga were as intense as the first episode, then yeah, I would probably have dropped it quickly and not be current on the manga. Luckily for Senpai, Nagatoro becomes less malicious with her actions towards him as time goes on. She treats his sanctuary, the Art Clubroom, as her hangout after school and regularly messes with him. For better or worse, Senpai now has someone who wants to hang out with him after school.
Of course, some people watched Nagatoro because they want a girl to treat them like how Nagatoro treats Senpai. It reminds me of the people who wanted a yandere girlfriend after watching Mirai Nikki. Nagatoro and Yuno are similar in the way that they're both a manifestation of an ‘ideal woman’ that would pay attention to a down-on-his-luck teenage boy. Of course in real life, having a psychotic partner would be a nightmare to deal with, but it doesn’t stop people from having fantasies about having one. With that being said, Nagatoro is way more lovely than Yuno, and Nagatoro is a way better series than Mirai Nikki. If you fall under the category of “I want a slightly younger girl to bully me into I cry”, then you’ve probably already watched Nagatoro, so this review is useless to you. For normal people, the reasons why I would recommend you to watch Nagatoro would be because: it’s funny and because it has a special charm that is hard to find in anime of this nature.
Going back to the first episode, while Nagatoro’s psychological warfare turned off some viewers (and probably turned on as many), I found it quite hilarious. Perhaps it was due to the absurdity of it all, or because I’m a fan of slapstick humor, but I found it funny. I might be in the minority when it comes to what I thought of the first episode. It doesn’t matter in the long run anyway because Nagatoro tones down how mean she is to Senpai and becomes more creative with how she messes with him as time goes on. This is a good thing, because keeping the same energy as the first episode for the whole run would change the show from being mischievous to being cruel. If you’re a fan of slapstick humor, then Nagatoro is up your alley.
When I first got into Nagatoro, I wasn’t expecting it to be good in the way it is. It is weirdly wholesome in its own little way, something that I don’t see often. The reason why Nagatoro bugs the hell out of Senpai, and only Senpai, is because she cares deeply about him. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t go out of her way to be a menace to society in the Art Clubroom after school. And of course, Senpai doesn’t mind it either because she’s a spark in his otherwise dull school life, and because he finds her cute. The two have a chemistry that shouldn’t be as strong as it is, but is nonetheless. It being what it is, most of the romance revolves around Senpai being teased, but it still maintains its own charm.
Nagatoro does good by keeping in its niche romantic-comedy lane and not devolving into harem-shit or trying to be smarter than it is. There’s mild fanservice, which I’m not a fan of, but it comes with the territory of this time of series. Beggars can’t be choosers. One thing that stood out to me was the voice acting for Senpai, especially in the first episode. He sounded exactly like what a loser teenage boy would sound like if a girl randomly started berating you.
One thing about Nagatoro is that it’s drawn and written by what most people would call a ‘freak’. Along with the doujins that nanashi (the mangaka) has drawn, the prequels (or pilots, if you will) of Nagatoro are even more strange and sadistic than even the first few chapters of the manga. Sadistic to the point where it isn’t even funny—it’s just off-putting. Definitely put nanashi into the category of ‘people who want a younger woman to berate them’. But hey, many great authors were freaks.
Going back to the beginning, the whole hype around it came and went. There was never any ‘discourse’ about the anime like there was for Uzaki-chan, which is good. Hell, at this point, if there was any ‘discourse’, it would be probably coming from racists upset that the Nagatoro series has such a huge fanbase in Central and South America, or at someone making a joke about Nagatoro being Mexican. As with most 'discourse' related to the anime industry, none of this matters at the end of the day. Nagatoro is a very decent romantic comedy that manages to be hilarious and wholesome at the same time. If you’re into either of those genres, or are a glutton for punishment, I’d give it a spin.