Man, I really wanted to like Tamon's B-Side. Shoujo manga nowadays don't always have the best track record when it comes to getting good anime adaptations, and even the ones that do don't get to last very long, which definitely worries me in light of the news of both Red River and From Far Away getting anime adaptations. I didn't know much about Tamon's B-Side getting into it, and I figured it'd be a decent time killer based on what I've heard about it. Now, I will admit, I've never read the manga, so my review is based only on the anime itself. Unfortunately, rather than enjoying it, I just found myself constantly annoyed with it the entire time. I do know a little bit about how the idol industry works in Japan, though not to the extent that others that have done extensive research on it have. I tried, I really tried, but I just found Tamon's B-Side as a show to be extremely tedious, annoying, and oftentimes pretty tasteless.

Based on the manga by Yuki Shiwasu, the story goes as follows: High school girl Utage Kinoshita works part-time as a housekeeper so she can afford her fangirl obsession with Tamon Fukuhara, her favorite member of the boy band F/ACE. When work serendipitously sends her to the home of her idol, she discovers that the real Tamon couldn't be more different from his wild and sexy onstage persona! As it turns out, Tamon is a pessimistic, neurotic, insecure mess in real life, and what's worse, he's threatening to quit! Utage refuses to let anyone stand in Tamon's way—least of all himself. What's a fangirl to do but roll up her sleeves and support her favorite singer with everything she's got? Yeah, this has idol fan fantasy all over it, all of it played for comedy and comedy alone. Now, as far as basing its entire premise off a single joke goes, Tamon's B-Side does manage to get some good mileage out of it, such as all the crazy ways Utage has to remind herself not to cross the line beyond just being a loyal fan, and how Utage's face explodes into pink goo every time Tamon so much as breathes in her direction when he's in Hottiehara mode. Plus, the sub translation by Michelle Tymon really helped in this regard, doing a stellar job of doing both a faithful translation and incorporating the kind of teenage internet slang that you just know kids these days will either cringe at or throw out just for funsies, complete with its own jokes.

Unfortunately, if my rating isn't an indicator, I wasn't big on virtually everything else. My first gripe is with the plot. If you take away both the whole singer/loony fan aspect and all of Japan's idol industry quirks, you pretty much just get yet another cliche "insecure man has to be constantly helped by a Manic Pixie Dream Girl" story, only with a very creepy power imbalance involved. It's not enough to have Tamon just be an anxious and insecure person, no no, he's basically made to be the most pathetic, whiny, neurotic mess humanly possible, to the point that he'll say things like wanting to be taught how to take selfies without throwing up without any hint of irony, and has to be dependent on Utage, a high school aged girl, and require her help for even the most basic things. There's an inherent tastelessness to this whole setup that I just couldn't ignore. The guy needs therapy, not some fangirl screaming at him whenever he has an episode, and why would someone like Tamon even want to be an idol, where he has to put on a completely different persona on the regular anyway? Not to mention that we have no idea why Tamon is such a mess, so his two contrasting personas feel much less like different facets of him and more like two different personalities stuffed into one body that the creators slapped together because it makes for funny comedy. It kind of undermines the whole premise of the series exploring the faces that people put on for the benefit of others. Also, the fact that he actually attempts suicide in one episode is not only played for laughs, which is just abhorrent to me, his reasoning for it just makes him come off like a whiny bitch rather than the troubled individual the show wants me to see him as. Sorry, but I think Bocchi The Rock pulled off having a perpetually anxious, neurotic lead character better because not only do we actually see why Bocchi became the way that she is, the other characters in that show have personalities and lives outside of helping Bocchi with her issues, so they feel like more well-rounded characters. Not to mention Bocchi doesn't play suicide for mean-spirited laughs and actually treats Bocchi's issues relatively sensitively.

Speaking of well-rounded characters, as a whole, this is also where Tamon's B-Side is lacking. Like I mentioned above, the series tries to explore the idea of how the faces idols put on for their audience are just a facade and how they can be just as flawed and human as everyone else is off-camera, but it's hard to really care about what it's trying to convey because Tamon's B-Side leans way too hard into exaggeration for literally everything and everyone, characters included. I already mentioned my issues with Tamon, as the lack of reasoning as to why he's such a neurotic mess gives me little reason to care about him in any way, though having his fellow idol coworkers treat him like shit for petty reasons doesn't endear me to them either, furthering the show's tastelessness in regards to how it treats legitimate conditions like anxiety. Not to mention it makes me question why, again, a person like Tamon would even want to be an idol in the first place considering how horrible the environment is for him. While I can appreciate that Utage as a heroine isn't a spineless wallflower in the face of adversity, is passionate about how much she wants to help Tamon, and does grapple with wanting to be closer to him and wanting to keep an appropriate distance as a fan, Japan's idol culture being super puritanical and all, she still doesn't have much to her besides worshipping Tamon. Actually, none of the other characters are all that interesting either. The same issues I have with Tamon are repeated with all the other members of F/ACE, as their supposed authentic selves are just as banal and archetypal as the fabricated, artificial personalities they market to the masses. Ouri being a jackass makes some sense considering his upbringing, and most people in the entertainment industry tend to let their fame and privilege go to their heads, but the second the show made Ouri fall in love with Utage because how dare she like Tamon and not him, I rolled my eyes. The only member of F/ACE who doesn't suffer this problem is Natsuki, who actually does have a decently fleshed out backstory that makes his behavior make a lot of sense, though by this show's standards that's still not saying much.

Maybe my indifference to the show is because I'm not into Japan's idol industry and the whole oshi/idol parasocial relationship it's trying so hard to promote and show as desirable and attainable. Actually, that's why Tamon's B-Side doesn't work for me: For all its attempts at getting comedic mileage out of it, it's still trying to portray the idol industry as being this great thing even when it pays lip service to how bad it actually is for the people involved. Japan's idol industry only sees its human performers as perfect, marketable products, with even the slightest flaw being enough to cause a huge scandal and tank their entire career even if the issue isn't something that should be made into a big deal or was just a one-time offense outside work. This isn't even exclusive to just singers either. Look what happened with Maya Imamori in No. 1 Sentai Gozyuger. Tamon's B-Side wants to milk the idol industry and all its quirks and idiosyncrasies for comedy, shilling it for all its worth, and all the gags about how Utage will be murdered if people find out she even associates with Tamon beyond being a fan and how Tamon is treated by both his boss and coworkers are just utterly tasteless and very troubling. Like, I don't expect Tamon's B-Side to be the next coming of Oshi no Ko or anything, I just don't want it to gloss over how bad the idol industry actually is and want the show to treat it and Tamon's issues with more gravitas and sensitivity. Oshi no Ko had plenty of its own issues in its attempts to portray how unforgiving and cutthroat the entertainment industry can be. Do I even need to talk about the whole Hana Kimura debacle? Tl;dr, I don't like that Tamon's B-Side makes light of how utterly awful the idol industry can be to both idols and fans and tries to make the parasocial relationships between fans and idols seem presentable and desirable.

Furthermore, the music isn't all that great either. All of F/ACE's songs are your typical boy band bubblegum J-pop you've heard in a million other things, offering nothing you haven't heard elsewhere. The animation is...fine, for the most part. I actually think the CGI performances looked surprisingly good...though do they really have to render the guys in CG when they're just on stage talking and not just singing? It really took me out of the immersion. I will also say that the voice acting is fairly good too. I definitely got a laugh out of Saori Hayami going against her usual typecast and going full ham as a loud, loony fan who's probably off her gourd in more ways than one. Gimme more Hayami being a screechy gremlin! Let her do more character archetypes besides the motherly housewife or the smart girl. But that's all the praise I have to offer for Tamon's B-Side. If there does wind up being a second season, I probably won't watch it. If you're into this, good for you. You got more enjoyment out of it than I have, so more power to you. I just found Tamon's B-Side to be an annoying, tasteless, irritating vial of snake oil that turns me off more than anything. I'm not sure if I want to read the manga considering how much I disliked the anime, but who knows? I'm just happy to be done with this show.