A lot of romcom manga has been coming as of late, and it’s great! But it can be a bit formulaic at times. Heard this one before? The cast is quirky and the socially inept boy has the highschool’s hottest girl teasing him. What does she see in him? Doesn’t matter, the point is, he's like us spergs, but managed to hit the jackpot. Anyways this will go on for at 100 chapters, gets an anime adaption, and it’s great. The Mangaka can finally eat more than one small meal a day, and more fans are introduced to the series. Fast forward one year later, let's check up on that source material. Little to no progress is made, the jokes are getting old, the cast is now huge, and the fanbase is dwindling. 200 chapters of just teasing the nerdy highschool boy gets annoying. Initially, when Aharen-san came on my radar, I said screw that noise and didn’t pick it up for the first few weeks of it airing. But word spread around, and people were praising it. I figured why not try it out and proceeded to watch. What was in store for me, was this show really that much different and better than its contemporaries?
I fell head over heels for this anime after watching just the first episode. Because even the smallest adjustments to overdone genres such as highschool romcoms (rc's) can make it stand out tremendously from its competition. In this series we follow the relationship between Raido and Aharen-san. Two socially peculiar highschool freshman who make a vow to themselves to not let their quirks stop them from having a social life like it did in their preceding years in school. Raido is a stone faced, but extremely kind natured and well mannered, young man. People are often put off by his serious looking demeanor and no pan face. He suffers from over analyzing everything and being reserved. Aharen-san is a tiny pale japanese girl who looks more like an elementary school kid than a highschooler. While not completely mute, she is extremely soft spoken and unable to properly express her emotions through conventional means. Despite this, after Raido talks to her since she sits next to him in class (by the window in the corner of course) they both become friends with a mission to help understand one another. Neither character are flustered, nervous nancies, and are genuinely interested in making the effort to make the most of their highschool years despite their quirks. Throughout the development of their relationship we find out that everyone else around them from their other friends, family, and acquaintances that no one in this series is “the straightman”. Everyone is an oddball, and that’s why I love this romcom so much.
I would’ve called this the romcom of the season (which it is) for just having an MC who doesn’t piss himself when his love interest makes eye contact. Instead we have two characters who are legitimate weirdos, and this isn’t exemplified through them saying, “Oh geez, what do I say, this is so bad I can’t believe I’m so awkward!” This is instead shown through example. Due to the miscommunication between the two, Raido usually assumes that the most extreme scenario to be the reason for something he doesn’t understand. For example, Aharen doesn’t show up for school? Spec ops mission. Making tea? Well she’s the reincarnated spirit of an old chinese shogun of course! You get the picture. This is a recurring gag yes, but here’s the key component as to why I’m not complaining, it’s because it has plenty of other jokes as well. The banter between characters, the gags, the characters themselves, the situations, the reason behind something happening. It’s all cute, funny, heartwarming and refreshing.
I genuinely enjoyed all the gags, characters and situations so much that we’d be here all day if I told each and every one of my favorite gags/episodes. But by far, my favorite episode has to be the rap episode. Though the fidget spinner bit after the rap part wasn’t as funny, I still found it to be a cute addition to the episode. But Aharen and Raidou finally discovering an effective means to converse with each other through the art of rap was not only endearing, but their rhymes were fire! But Raidou thinks this will backfire since now that every convo they have is a rap, he feels that they always have to battle each other to see who’s the better rapper instead of having a legitimate conversation. The teacher confiscates their mic and their hip hop beat and now they can no longer rap at school. Earlier while at home Raido practiced his rap on his younger sister who initially dismissed him as being weird, but after he comes back from school she feels bad and tries to compliment him, through rapping herself. He’s confused, she’s flustered and runs away giving him a fidget spinner leading to the next arc of the episode. That was a perfect segue! It’s not taking the 4-koma like gag structure of a series like Lucky star or Azumanga. In those, it doesn’t matter what order you watch the series and you can cut and replace gags from one episode and replace it with another. It has a narrative and unlike other contemporary Rc’s, it is committed to making legitimate progress not only in their relationship but also the plot of the story itself.
The characters all slayed me too. From aharen’s younger brother who looks exactly like her but is more genki and up beat (Raido accidentally confuses him for her at an arcade and spends the day being creeped out by a cheery version of Aharen-san) to her older sister who’s extremely protective of her sister to the point that she constantly threatens Raido. She loves her sister so much that she’d rather him deliver goods to her even if she bought them herself, because she knows how much Raido means to her. This is too sweet for me to handle. Then you have their classmate friends like Oshiro. A girl who stalks Aharen because she feel indebted to keeping her safe and happy and feels jealous and threatened by Raido. There’s also their two other chad and stacy like friends who are the closest thing we have to a “straightman” they just want Raido and Aharen to get together by any means. There’s two teachers, one of which constantly passes out at the sight of something she deems “high esteem” (pure, cute, lovely would be better words but they chose esteem for some reason) and the other looks after her. There’s an elementary school girl named Futaba who’s my favorite character, always making each scene she’s in funnier than it was. She’s jealous that the boy she likes looks up to Aharen as a king (no romantic implication at all either) and despite hating both Raido and Aharen, she still considers them acquaintances. Even wanting Aharen to teach her how to cook to impress the boy she likes.
The animation and score are nothing to write home about, but I do love the style. Characters all have this roundedness to them and no one in this show is particularly angular in their design. Every character radiates a glow of the lighting and colors that inhabit that background and environment. Speaking of which, the camping episode at night is the most visually remarkable episode. You feel the coldness of the night as Aharen tries to confess her feelings to Raidon over a glistening lake, reflecting the moon’s light, with whispers of the wind flowing from one ear canal to the next. Maybe that last bit was me since I wear earbuds while watching anime, but I digress. The visuals fit the vibe perfectly and it was a very attractive show to watch.
The spring 2022 season of anime is the season of subverted expectations. I went into this with no inkling of enjoying it as much as I did. Aharen-san managed to captivate me with its unique twist on the highschool RC genre that’s popular to pump out like hot cakes these days. It managed to keep me engaged with the variety of gags, memorable characters, and a romance plot that makes legitimate progression between two unlikely individuals. Did this show live up to the hype I read in those threads? Absolutely, modern and future highschool RCs take note. This is how you properly do a highschool RC adaptation.
