You get what you pay for with a show called The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses
by Bob Johnson

If you’re sold on the title, then yes, this show will deliver! For the rest of you, starting with the folks far to the other side of the fence, let me remind you of the tried and true fandom advice of “don’t harsh the squee” – a good reminder for any fevered debate, let alone during this hot, hot Summer 2023.

Meganewasu is about a girl… and a guy. For shonen anime, these are not your traditional stars of the show. They’re not motormouths leaping through memetic scenes with finger Vs in the air. There’s no lightning-fast combat, merchable props, or magic cats. It’s just two people with fee~fee~s and a lot of shyness and introspection.

If this was any other show, this would be the B plot. When they interrupt the samurai space battles just to cut to two randos dithering about their hormones-to-spoken-words ratio, I’m the first to shout “SAY IT! SAY IT!” at the screen. But in this case, there’s nothing to derail. You are not going to get palace intrigue in the teachers’ offices at this school. There’s no army of genki girl mecha pilots. This show is hearts and sugar and fluff all the way down.

This is one of those “healing” shows I’ve heard so much about, isn’t it? A weekly meditation on the beauty and melancholy of having a crush, seeing the other maybe-or-maybe-not crushing back, while also already knowing better than to pollute the local social network with ill-considered pickup lines. And it feels real, like Fujichika-sensei is a lady who can speak with a sliver of experience, perhaps?

Though even I have been impatient with the show’s glacial pace, I resisted the urge to watch at double speed, which gives the background art plenty of time to shine. Some of it, like the school entryway CG, is a little overused, but it definitely pops. The way the sunbeams catch the dust in the classroom is not something you usually see outside of full-budget movies or the odd KyoAni production. So it does feel a tad off to see the relative disinterest in animating the background characters.

Is this a feast for 100% of anime fans? Certainly not. But what if you’re tired of only getting a slice of romance with your generic shonen show and want the awkward gawpers stuttering at each other to be the whole meal? Well then, this is your ride. It stretches out those moé shojo-ai tropes wide, long, and soothingly around all of those highs and lows felt while aching another millimeter toward a confession.

Maybe Look It Up:
The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses (Meganewasu) anime
Based on the manga by Koume Fujichika
Produced by GoHands, Licenced by Crunchyroll
Streaming (press time): Crunchyroll

The points don’t matter, unless you’re expelled, from Classroom of the Elite
by Bob Johnson

Not everyone’s a high flier. Take Kiyotaka Ayanokoji, for example. He just wants to sail through doing the bare minimum. The only problem is that his dad sent him to this particular boarding school to earn elite medallion status, and the ridiculous games this academy makes its aspirants play would make the most cutthroat Atlanta boardroom blush.

The students are issued Delta Airlines crew uniforms red blazers, assigned to a lettered “class” team, given a set number of starter points, and then are hounded through a series of crises designed to inspire their permanent tragic desperation and dependency on playing the game. The players are never entirely told the rules, which are constantly in flux anyway, and they really don’t matter until the end of each challenge event, when the scores are totalled, and we find out who has won and who is expelled.

But Kiyotaka has a secret, and a plan. His secret is that he really doesn’t care, and nobody can ever make him. But as long as he’s here, and he has to play the games, he’s going to make sure that nobody sees how well he can play. Hence his carefully cultivated relationship with Suzune Horikita, a too-cool-for-you prep who only cares about her own grades and standing, until Kiyotaka ropes her into helping out the whole class. With Ayanokoji pulling the strings, Horikita begins to win.

But this doesn’t just inspire the team to rally around her, it draws the attention of the school administration and rival classes, who each have their own reasons to keep Class D’s face eating dirt at the bottom of the totem pole. It plays out time and again, with Ayanokoji thwarting each new scheme in turn, coming closer and closer to showing his true skillset.

Along the way, we explore concepts in game theory and tour the DSM-5 in search of new mental illnesses, mainly borne by the ladies of the show as it expands its ecchi harem. Given the kind of show this is, it’s particularly unusual that the show’s first and most important relationship (Kiyotaka/Suzune) is hardly ever treated as a romantic pairing, though that may change next season, who knows?

Spoiling the show further wouldn’t be fair to you; there’s a special sauce to CotE that I haven’t seen come together anywhere else. Some of the ground it covers was trodden in shows like Moriarty the Patriot, Monster, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans… or for western media fans, think of it as Suits meets Hunger Games meets Poirot mixed with a dash of Cyrano de Bergerac. Bottom line: this show is Code Geass done right. It’s worth a watch, if you want to attend head games high school.

Maybe Look it Up:
Classroom of the Elite (Youzitsu) anime (S1 and S2 reviewed)
Based on the manga by Sakagaki and Shogo Kinugasa
Produced by Lerche, Licenced by Crunchyroll
Streaming (press time): Crunchyroll