A mysterious new student has just transferred into Akira Tsubaki’s high school, and while she may be kind of cute, she’s also a grade-A weirdo. She wears her bangs over her eyes, obscuring them from contact with her peers. She sleeps at her desk at every single opportunity, responds coldly to any and all social interactions, and generally just seems to be fine with being ignored and left alone. If all of that weren’t already off-putting enough, she just kinda bursts into laughter in the middle of class one day, stunning the entire class and infuriating the teacher as she stands up, falls out of her chair and rolls on the ground, kicking her feet over something too personal to explain. This all should have kept the red string of fate from going anywhere near her, until one fateful afternoon, when Tsubaki wakes Urabe up at her desk, only to find that she’s left a puddle of drool behind... And within that tiny patch of cheek juice rests the mouth of the weirdest rabbit hole that a young Japanese boy could possibly explore.

Mysterious Girlfriend X was produced by Hoods Entertainment, a short lived studio that existed from 2009 to 2021. As usual, the majority of the titles they’re credited to only had them helping out a little bit, like with in-between animation of storyboards or something like that, but they have managed to secure a decent amount of titles for themselves. I’ve seen a few of them outside of Mysterious Girlfriend X, but the only one I’ve seen recently was Gekidol, which was frankly so boring that I barely remember anything from it. Still, looking through their resume, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that they tend to gravitate towards really artsy, slice of life romance, and bizarre fetish content... And sure enough you can find all of those in this anime.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter, though, because visually speaking, Mysterious Girlfriend X is downright beautiful. Say what you want about Hoods’ resume, but it definitely felt like they had a decent budget to work with here, because the animation is smooth and full of life, and it never really feels like any shortcuts are ever being taken. On the one hand this shouldn’t mean much, because this is an anime taking place at a high school, so not a lot of animation is generally needed... There are a lot of conversations and inner-voice narrations playing out over someone’s unmoving face, so you’d probably expect the high points to be characters competing athletically or just refusing to freeze in place in the background of a shot, but it goes a lot deeper than that, and it does so both often and surprisingly early in the story.

In addition to the relatively normal events that you’d expect to occur at school, or on the way home from school, or the interactions between a young couple, this series also features several highly elaborate and extremely expensive looking dream sequences, and no, not the usual kind of dream sequences that you get in fiction. These feel like the actual kind of weird and surreal dreams that people actually have. A lot of them involve Tsubaki and Urabe interacting in a tight, claustrophobic city setting that feels vaguely italian to me, and they’re so intricate and fluid and stuffed with metaphors that they adopt kind of a hypnotic quality, like it feels like you’re dreaming yourself while watching them unfold. The character designs are really rustic in nature, adding to the nostalgic theming that I’ll be getting into a little later. They almost remind me of some of the more obscure works of Rumiko Takahashi, and the characters are all pretty easy on the eyes as a result. This aesthetic also transitions to some of the more experimental sequences quite seamlessly.

I only have a couple of issues with the visuals, and just to rip the bandaid off now, my first issue is that there is a bit of nudity in the story, and the censorship they use just feels lazy and is kind of an eye sore. They’ll cover a naked character’s front side in complete shadow, which is off-putting when said character has a full-body shot making it feel like 80% of the screen is in shadow(I mean at that point, you might as well JUST do a close-up on their face, right?). The other issue I have is with how drool is presented on screen, not because I’m grossed out by it... I’m honestly not... But because it looks distractingly unrealistic. It’s really thick, sparkly, and depending on where you see it, it either looks ike a puddle of ambrosia from the gods, or a coating of semen on somebody’s finger(or a trail of babymaker juice dripping in a trail from their lips). Still, these are just occasional visual quirks, and I can’t say they take away from the visuals over-all.

The English dub was a Sentai Filmworks effort, and some of it really works. Josh Grelle is playing very comfortably in his wheelhouse, as someone who has played more than his fair share of normal, and sometimes even boring protagonists while adding liveliness and relatability to them where needed. Genevieve Simmons is almost perfect as Urabe, as she sounds almost exactly like the original seiyuu, except for the fact that her delivery is consistently slow and soft, where Ayako Yoshitani sped up sometimes, and had more of a sharp edge to her consonants. Either performance works, but Yoshitani sounds a slight bit more unique. Greg Ayres is doing his thing... Brittany Karbowski feels kind of wasted at first in a somewhat minor role, but as her character develops and features more prominently in the story, she gets more opportunities to let her voice control shine. The only real sour note is Cynthia Martinez, an actor with an extremely unique voice who is unfortunately very easy to misuse, and I don’t think her unique vocal qualities really add anything to Aika Hayakawa.

If you were to ask people to describe this anime in one word, there are a small number of words that would dominate your results. The first is Weird, which, yeah, it’s pretty fucking weird. You might also get Sweet, or maybe Boring, but the one that I’d like to focus on right now is Nostalgic, because I do feel that one of the strongest elements of Mysterious Girlfriend X is its ability to deliver a sense of nostalgia to the viewer through its timeless ambience, rustic aesthetic and relatable details. Personally, I did not grow up in Japan, and I did not experience Japanese school life, but sitting in class on a hot day, fanning myself because the breeze from the open window isn’t strong enough, and trying to stay awake while listening to the teacher? Oh yeah, the casual way that this anime depicts that moment, I swear I can fucking feel it again.

This feeling also applies to the relationship between Urabe and Tsubaki, because these are two teenagers who are clumsily trying to navigate their first ever relationship, constantly making missteps and mistakes, testing and adapting to each others’ boundaries, all to realize that none of their blunders mean anything if they can find that one magical moment where they can connect and make each other smile. We have all endured some kind of dating disaster in our younger years, so seeing just how hopeless these two lovebirds can be with each other while still remaining bonded and mostly faithful feels honest and realistic... At least until you realize that realistically speaking, it’s extremely rare for high school relationships to last the long haul, since real life is not Harry Potter, and even out of the fraction of people who DO marry their highschool sweethearts wind up regretting it. I might have had hope for these two back in 2012, but now when I see them all I can picture is Hunter and Megan’s relationship in Class of 09.

Looking beyond the infamously batshit premise of this anime, the story is about a boy who asks out an oddball girl because she looks cute, and they stay together despite moving extremely slow, and facing occasional challenges brought on by their conflicting goals and some fairly random outside interference, and while I don’t recall if this is ever explained, they keep their relationship a secret as best they can. They have moments where they connect and feel blissful together, but they’re few and far between, as they constantly clash with each other over frustration, possessiveness and jealousy. It takes Tsubaki nearly the entire series to get permission to hug Urabe without asking, and they’re not even going to kiss until it happens in some kind of special moment that hasn't happened yet. Translation: I give them one year, tops. Obviously I’ve never read the manga, I am aware that it goes further than what we see on TV, but just based on the series alone, I don’t think these two are gonna last as far as graduation, let alone mawiage.

But lets go back to the big gimmick of this anime, spit. Saliva. Drool. I hate it. Again, to be clear, I’m not grossed out by it, but good lord do I understand why some people can’t get past it. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, going back to the element of nostalgia, you could make an argument that this gimmick is meant to serve as a metaphor for the weird little rituals that a lot of couples have that’s exclusively meant to exist between them, who cares if nobody else understands. Hell, my most serious girlfriend liked to stroke the tip of my middle finger with hers while saying “Chicken.” To this day I have no idea what the FUCK was up with that, but it didn’t matter, because it was ours. The problem is, that ritual didn’t have some kind of supernatural properties, it was just some weird shit between two weird people. Also, she was grossed out by soggy bread, I don’t think spit-play would have flown with her.

I don’t like the way this gimmick is explored throughout the story. I’ve said before that I like when a story has a weird idea(or an especially stupid one) and they go balls to the wall in committing to it. This anime kind of explores its concept, but also kind of neglects it, leaving way too many unanswered questions. Is the miracle of spit-swapping a universal thing, or does it only work with Urabe? How can your own drool only taste special to another person, but not to you? How does drool facilitate psychic powers and transfer injuries between hosts? Is there some potentially world-changing medical application for all of this? I also don’t like how inconsistent it is. People either act like it’s the strangest thing they’ve ever heard of, or they just nod along and accept it. Some of Urabe’s weird quirks are shrugged off, others are granted extremely dubious explanations. What would happen if more people knew about the loogies of love? Would they ostracize and make fun of them? Or would spit-swapping become a popular trend?

Like I said before, the production values for this series are strong, and the nostalgic theming goes a long way, but I don’t really think it works as a whole as well as I used to. The only thing that feels compelling about Tsubaki and Urabe as a couple are all of Urabe’s quirks, which kind of start to feel arbitrary to her character thanks to what little explanation they have. The fact that she carries a pair of scissors in her underwear that she can wield with blinding speed and surgical precision makes about as much sense to her character as saying she likes to skateboard dressed like a lobster. You CAN make those kinds of details work, but it’s not a given that they will. One of the ways you do this is by fleshing out a character, but we only know Urabe from Tsubaki’s point of view, and while being the only blue-hair in school might make her stand out, I’m sorry, I’m not impressed.

I will admit, there are some cute and charming moments between Urabe and Tsubaki. These moments usually do not involve drool. Honestly, whenever they bust out the spit-fingers, it ruins whatever mood they were able to build for me. Urabe and Tsubaki aren’t the worst anime couple by far, but here’s the thing, I’ve seen their shtick(minus the gimmicks) done so much better since then. I recently watched Don’t Toy With me, Miss Nagatoro! And I felt far more engaged by that main couple. The same thing goes for My Dress Up Darling, Uzaki-chan wants to Hang Out, Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, and even an older show like Beck. These shows all feature couples that constantly just circle each other, bumping into each other awkwardly while making little to no progress together, and it feels genuinely compelling... Because unlike Mysterious Girlfriend X, they don’t get together in the first fucking episode!

There can be beauty in frustration. You can easily keep an audience’s attention through a slow-burn romance. A romance doesn’t have to be satisfying to be engaging. But in order to make this work, you need to preserve the ‘will they or won’t they’ element of the story. You have to want to see what they’ll be like as a couple, so there’ll be some kind of anticipation behind all of the teasing and near-misses. Urabe becomes Tsubaki’s girlfriend in episode one, and the series closes with him reminding the audience that Urabe is his girlfriend. Yeah, no shit. After 13 episodes with no kissing and around 90% of your non-spit physical contact floating dangerously close to the line between consent and non-consent, I kind of forgot that. Like I said, this show has its moments, but they’re few and far between, and most of the story feels either boring, frustrating, or just weird for the sake of weird.

Mysterious Girlfriend X is available from Sentai Filmworks, and for streaming through Amazon Prime. There’s an OVA episode that was never dubbed or brought over, and the original manga is available from Vertical comics.

I remember this series being kind of a big deal back in 2012, both for meme reasons as it was “That spitting anime” that people would challenge each other to watch, and as one of those shows that “Are actually really good despite their squicky premise.” I think it’s kind of weird that while its popularity and awareness have shrunk over time, that general consensus about it has not changed at all. Out of the people who remember it, there is a high percentage who still consider it to be this underrated gem, and I just happen to not be one of them. I know this review has probably come off as disproportionately negative, but I don’t hate this anime, I can see there’s a lot of good in it, it just doesn’t all come together as well for me as it does for most people.

I give Mysterious Girlfriend X a 6/10.