Pseudo Harem

Harem is all about wish-fulfilment: a situation where an average Joe becomes the most sought-after person by attractive girls and is surrounded by them. This idea undoubtedly appeals to Eiji Kitahama, props manager of a high school drama club. He’d love to have his own harem too, despite the fact that he’s unpopular and no one is romantically interested in him. The only girl around him is Rin Nanakura, his junior from the same club. Here comes the question: how to make it a harem with this setup?

Luckily, our heroine comes up with a clever solution: be the harem. As an aspiring actress, Rin joined the drama club to improve her acting and express her interest in it. The latter goes beyond that actually, because she’s also into her senpai. Through made-up harem personas, she spends a lot of time with and gets closer to him. At the same time, Eiji finally has his wish fulfilled just from one person, thanks to Rin playing various harem personalities in front of him. Cool girl, little devil, tsundere, it's all archetypes you’re already familiar with. She basically offers five different girls for the price of one, simulating what it is like to have a harem. Hence, this show is called Giji Harem (Pseudo Harem)

At first, each episode mostly runs as a series of short skits of our main couple. Isolated skits to be exact, since each skit is loosely connected and won’t lose much context if taken randomly. The highlight reel-like format isn’t much of an issue to me, but jarring transitions between scenes are. It’s a little bit faster than I used to as if they wanna move to from one setup to the next one ASAP. The good thing is the show improved later on, where every episode was more structured and the pacing felt less rushed. It really took them a while to reach this point but as long as I can see these two tease each other, that’s what I stayed for.

In terms of personal enjoyment, I find the gag doesn’t get stale quickly. The anime may heavily rely on its premise indefinitely for the sake of content, but likeable characters and their dynamic really make the best of it. Rin is a kouhai you want to protect at all costs. Her cute face while acting, her giggles, and her noises are so addictive. I loved it when Eiji had a ton of fun from flirting with her various characters. He can be demanding sometimes with his requests for her to play certain trope but besides that, he’s goofy. The rest of the cast, from other club members to our leads’ relatives, are also great although they don’t appear often.

Pseudo Harem in general has simple production values. This is my first experience with Nomad’s work so all I can say is the animation does its job well. Although the background art and character designs aren't visually stunning or anything, they complement each other and don’t feel out of place. I’m not sure if it’s just me but the OSTs sound monotonous for the most part. There’s a certain melody in some theme songs which is fine, but a little bit of variation wouldn’t hurt them. Blouse by Gohobi is one of my favourite opening songs from this season, while Rin-chan’s Ad-lib as ending theme is simply fun to listen to.

On voice acting department, every seiyuu knew what they were doing with their respective role. Saori Hayami's soft tone and Nobuhiko Okamoto's hoarse voice perfectly fit the characters. One thing I notice here is that Hayamin’s voice doesn’t really vary much when Rin is in harem mode. There were times I couldn’t tell what persona she was playing. The director probably aimed for more realistic approach so a set of voices that sound completely different from each other won’t work. Understandable if that’s the case, because her acting voices outside the harem schtick are pretty convincing.

All in all, Pseudo Harem is a pure fluff romance with no unnecessary drama you can watch to relax. The characters are likeable, the interactions are sweet and the whole vibe is so wholesome. The title may turn people away but don’t let it fool you, because what you’re about to miss is the ultimate monogamous harem experience.