Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san is a series that could be a fun romcom, but due to bad decisions from the author after the first episodes, it just doesn’t work. Simply put, the gimmick of this series doesn’t do anything, sure Alya is Russian and she sometimes speaks it, but this doesn’t really change much, it’s like a different kind of tsundere-ism which would be okay, the problem here is that the series obviously breaks what should be the logical use of its premise by making the MC being able to understand Russian, which is stupid, there’s no point in making a character talk a different language so no one can get her just to make the MC being able to get her, and the justification about why he can speak Russian is also pretty dumb in itself. I sometimes wonder why working in a gimmick when you’ll just break it right from the start.
The protagonist is obviously meant to be “literally you”, just look at his introduction and you’ll notice it, oh he watches anime, he is an otaku, now he will play his gacha, and I just wanted to roll my eyes because once again I’m supposed to believe that the most beautiful girl in the class is in love with the MC who has nothing going on for him, and perhaps the author noticed that too and that’s why he also decided to make him someone proficient at everything he tries, you could replace him with Sakuta from Bunny Girl Senpai or Ayanokouji from CotE and it wouldn’t change anything because he is a charismatic god and a genius like nobody else that has ever existed but he NEEDS to hide his power level by being lazy and will only show it from time to time, the fact that he is a otaku is irrelevant, because he isn’t one, he does nothing to actually show it except saying that he is because the audience needs to self-insert as him, and by being called an otaku it makes it easier for the audience to think they are like him. Honestly, I’m not sure why there was a need to do two completely different versions of him in the same character or which one is worse.
If I was more invested in this series I would get shivers by thinking that Alya beating Yuki at the student council elections is completely plausible because she is the main female character and has the MC that can do absolutely everything by her side, because Alya most definitely doesn’t deserve to win it, she breaks down the second the MC isn’t holding her hand to cross the street as if she was a little baby that needs to be taken care of at every moment, there are multiple examples of this like the baseball club and football team, she needed to be saved by the MC despite the fact that that this is her job in the student council because she is the treasurer, she cannot even do that correctly and I just can’t see why she should win, maybe she’ll be able to actually stand in her own two feet at some point in the future, but even if she does how is she supposed to compete with Yuki when she actually has experience since she won in middle school? Alya was originally characterized as someone who is just so above everyone else and that only she is competent and that’s why she is alone, which barely explains why this girl who gets so much attention as the “solitary queen” has no friends, but she isn’t able to pull off things alone, it makes it funny when she got called out by the glasses girl that she was a pretty face with good notes and nothing more, because that’s true. We just get constantly told by the MC and the series that she is a hard worker and that you should support her for it, but we never see that being close to reality. Of course, this problem wouldn’t exist if the author didn’t add the student council plot to take over everything about the series, because it is easily the worst part about it.
Which takes me to the absolute best point of this series, that is, Yuki. She singlehandedly carried the show by being an actual character and not the boring and lazy attempt at making a tsundere that is Alya, from her way of talking being so polite that the subtitles cannot even begin to show that her manner of speaking would make a butler blush, and then when in private with her brother she is basically a brocon, playful and actually bounces well with the MC. Honestly, I agree with the glasses girl that they are the perfect duo and the show would be much better if she was the main girl because she got actual chemistry with him, even if she couldn’t salvage how shit the student council stuff is. She is actually fun to watch when she isn’t being serious, and when it comes to the student council presidential election, she actually has drive and ambition and will do terrible shit just to win, for example, using Alya’s own foolishness against her was actually nice and was basically playing 4D chess the entire episode, which seeing how stupid the other characters are, is not even surprising how she pulled it off. Even if she wasn’t easily the most entertaining thing about the series by a landslide, it’s not like she got much competition, Masha is not a character, she was a plot device to make the MC learn Russian because they met in the past, but that isn’t relevant, because they don’t do anything at all with that information because the MC doesn’t know she is her childhood friend, the fact that she knows and decides to do nothing about it and just let Alya have the MC makes all of this irrelevant as you aren’t even getting something out of it, just as an example.
Telling you that the first two episodes were the best part of this series would be the truth, after that, it jumped to Alya’s “sad” past and then to student council shenanigans which I honestly cannot care much about, it could be an actually entertaining romcom when it tries, which is almost any Yuki scene, but the fact that the gimmick it had is basically thrown to the side to the point Alya won’t speak in Russian in some episodes tells you everything that you have to know about the series, “the main girl is a Russian” is an extremely weak gimmick, so I’m not sure if the author actually thought about making this a full-fledged series in the first place. Honestly, this should’ve just been the Yuki show, that would’ve been great, but sadly it isn’t, instead we’re stuck with this bad excuse of a tsundere and a perfect self-insert MC.
Thank you for reading.
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