Nasa Yuzaki is determined to leave his name in the history books. Ranking first in the national mock exam and aiming for a distinguished high school, he is certain that he has his whole life mapped out. However, fate is a fickle mistress. On his way home one snowy evening, Nasa's eyes fall upon a peerless beauty across the street. Bewitched, Nasa tries to approach her—only to get blindsided by an oncoming truck.
Thankfully, his life is spared due to the girl's swift action. Bleeding by the side of an ambulance, he watches as the girl walks away under the moonlight—reminiscent of Princess Kaguya leaving for the moon. Refusing to let this chance meeting end, he forces his crippled body to chase after her and asks her out. Surprised by his foolhardiness and pure resolve, the girl accepts his confession under a single condition: they can only be together if he marries her!
This year, 2020, had a strange phenomenon of rom-coms. We had ‘Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It’ at the beginning of the year, where the idea of romance became an experiment as part of its storyteller. Spring dropped us into a fantasy world of reverse harem and otome tropes with My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Led to Doom. And of course, let’s not forget Summer 2020 that gave us ‘Kanojo, Okarishmasu’ a rom-com with relationships based on lies. Fall 2020 decided to give us a truthful romantic comedy of a married couple, and by marriage, I mean commitment...and a lot of romance. Isn’t this just a strange year?
Kenjirou Hata isn’t known for being a masterpiece storywriter. Most of his works often deal with romantic comedy elements and among them is Hayate the Combat Butler. Watching Tonikaku Kawaii gave me a similar impression at first when we meet Nasa Yuzaki, the main protagonist who gets involved in an accident. Is it fate when at that moment that he encounters his future wife, Tsukasa Tsukyomi? And that’s the funny idea about fate. When we talk about fate, it seems characters are destined to meet and one of the recurring tropes from the author’s previous work. Nasa and Tsukasa develop a relationship quickly as they get married in the very first episode. If you don’t believe me, just watch their union and signed registration. When you have two main protagonists get married from the very first episode, there’s bound to be endless questions popping into your head.
One of the first questions may be why these two would get married in the first place? Doesn’t marriage take time and commitment? They barely know each other but now are a married couple, a type of relationship that may last until death do them apart. From the very first few episodes, we can deduct that both main characters does have attraction towards each other. Nasa sees Tsukasa as a girl that you can only dream of even dating, let alone marrying. On the other hand, Tsukasa sees Nasa as a gentle soul with a selfless nature that truly values her well-being. However, the two are lack experience when it comes to actual romance. For instance, it took a lot of convincing for Tsukasa to tell Nasa to talk to her without being so formal. Tsukasa herself has trouble expressing her feelings and this usually translates into dozens of awkward moments between the duo. You could easily say that each episode is a test for the two lovebirds. Although over time, Nasa and Tsukasa learns a lot about each other and what it means to love.
As mentioned before, marriage is a commitment and a lifelong vow. To comprehend this idea, Tsukasa and Nasa had to arrange their life into a state where they can live comfortably. This includes securing a stable job, buying the right furniture, and making time to be with each other. It sounds a lot harder than it looks but realistically, almost any normal couple would have to go through this process. For Tsukasa and Nasa, some unfortunate circumstances drops them into a temporary home in later episodes. It’s one of those old sayings where when life knocks you down, you have to get back up. From a storytelling perspective, the duo faces the hardship of life and reality. The main storytelling theme focuses on their way of life and how they live each day to be what they committed to.
Despite some of the serious wordings of the plot elements, Tonikaku Kawaii is a fairly lighthearted show with tons of comedy and entertainment. You have to remember that the author wants us to experience a light rom-com, without too many tearjerking moments or despair. Indeed, this anime adaptation remains lighthearted that focuses on entertaining rather than a complex storytelling. With 12 episodes, the anime sets the bar for being what a rom-com should be although I emphasize that the ongoing manga is fairly long. In other words, this 1-cour adaptation serves more as a tool for viewers to get into the surface of the franchise. There’s a whole lot more down the rabbit hole. Otherwise, fans should be familiar with the overall tone of the comedy such as the character name gags (namely Nasa), misunderstandings, and other mischiefs.
With its small yet colorful cast of characters, the author also borrows similar character concepts from his previous work such as maids. Characters such as Kaname, Aurora, Charlotte are decorated with maid characteristics while Kaginoji Chitose serves the role of a jealous girl who gets the wrong impression about Nasa. No doubt, Chitose causes some unsettling drama between the couple and some episodes shows that she can be an annoying brat to deal with. Luckily, this is where we see Nasa at how he tackles the problem in his honest and sincere way. In many ways, Nasa is the ‘nice guy’ in their relationship but only that he doesn’t finish last. He’s first to be married to such a perfect housewife.
Studio Sevens Arcs may not be a powerhouse studio when it comes to animation but one thing is for certain, they managed to connect the dots in the right places for this adaptation. Tonikaku Kawaii’s visual style has a light touch with its character designs. It has a vibrant colorful art that retains the style of the manga look. Tsukasa in particular stands out as the poster girl and while other female characters are made with delicacy. Nasa himself also has a girly look despite being a male. This may or may not rub people’s impressions in the wrong way but for a rom-com, it suits them right. Plus, who can forget all those cartoony expressions.
It’s almost like a dream fantasy for Nasa, being able to find such a perfect girl like Tsukasa. Fate tied the knots together for these two characters and by no doubt, they retain a faithful relationship. Everyday is a challenge and every episode follows their steps of this married couple. If only the real world is perfect with all that buffet handholding.
I just want to leave a short review on why I only gave a 6/10.
While I do love romance anime and like the feel-good aspect of a lot of SoL anime, I didn't quite get the same from Tonikaku.
In my opinion, the best aspect of romance anime is when the two people you ship are unsure about how the other one feels, with a romantic finale of them getting together. I also don't mind a story where the characters are already a couple.
The problem I saw with Tonikaku is, that there is not...really a story. I can pretty much tell the whole story in less than 5 minutes. Also, while the first episodes were cute as hell, it got repetitive really fast.
Another problem is that there aren't really memorable locations other than the ones the whole anime plays in. There also weren't astonishing animations or pictures. They didn't cover the secret of her at all, so the mystic element is totally unnecessary in the end.
Tonikaku is definitely a feel-good anime and pretty cute as it is. I just don't see it having 13 episodes and can't recommend it to actively watch or binge it. It's a really good series to watch for when you want to chill and feel good or to watch next to playing games or something else, but I didn't have the need to binge it as I did with 5 other anime this week with a romance theme or parts of romance.
All in all not bad and totally wholesome, but a bit bland.
Tonikaku tries to be different and yet it falls short. Actually, scratch that. It falls FAR from being any different from any rom-com that I’ve seen. It attempted to mix up the order of a cliche and yet it still is the cliche. The show doesn’t know what it wants to be itself and there is near to nothing redeemable about the show. I have plenty of reasons why, as well. Let's dive in, shall we?
TL;DR at the bottom
Story
One look at the plot reveals that there’s nothing special. In summary, the protagonist, Nasa, gets really smart and later sees...a girl he likes and is too scared to confess. Hmmm, I’ve never seen this before. But wait! There’s Truck-Kun to save the day! Truck-Kun hits poor Nasa while he’s crossing the road! But fortunately for him, there’s the girl there to save the day. Let’s take a pause here, the synopsis itself is unappealing. It glues a bunch of cliches together into one giant mess; a protagonist that likes a girl, a girl that he’s too scared to confess to, and a truck that hits the protagonist. This has been seen God knows how many times even the newest of new weebs find the concept repetitive. Of course, this smart guy decides to try to ask out this girl after nearly bleeding to death, then she says yes on the condition that they marry. Then after a long while of not meeting, the girl just comes to his doorstep to marry him. Seriously? I don’t care how many people come up here using their excuses, this plot is straight-up brainless, like the story was made using mad libs and you pick the words using a random word generator.
On top of all of this, the show clearly wants to be different. The director was like, “You know what? Let’s just skip to the end and get them married”. This is an example of them wanting to drift away from a cliche. They switch up the beginning and the end in an attempt to “stand out”, because who cares about developing relationships when you can just conclude it in the first episode, right? But guess what? It still doesn’t stand out! Because everything sandwiched in the middle is just generic Slice-of-Life without a point except for introducing side characters or showing off their failed attempts to make it “cute”.
This Slice-of-Life is pretty mediocre, to say the least. It relies on “cute” faces and textbook awkward situations to tick off time, and the jokes they make aren’t that funny. Caught sniffing someone else’s clothes? Freaking out about a girl sleeping next to you? Really? I mean, I guess if you like small penis jokes and guys freaking out about a girl sleeping next to him, then this may be a bit enjoyable. And how many times does a show have to reference internet culture? It seriously got annoying after the second episode and afterward I wondered if I should drop this show or not. A girl saying to another girl that their skin is “like an iPhone X?”? And who else loves “game-streaming Youtubers?” I swear this script was made by someone who comes home after work from the studio for dinner and has to listen to his 11-year-old son blab on about internet things. Except this time, he is taking extremely loose notes. It’s mostly hit-or-miss humor except with the accuracy of a stormtrooper. They also leave many things open-ended, to the point where you can’t tell if they are serious or it was just a joke, and it was infuriating to watch and wait until they explain it again. Along with all of this, there is a random “mystery” element to it, as there is no explanation or clear backstory with Tsukasa. With that, they don’t give any further explanation why she is around and brushes off that element like it doesn’t exist. The main reason people seem to enjoy this show is because it is cute. However, I fail to find what is so cute about the same repeated jokes, Nasa acting like an awkward loser most of the time, and the side characters being absolute airheads. This is easily a 1.
Sound
Music is decent. The OP music is fairly interesting, as it has the vibe of Youtuber’s opening from 5 years ago, not that it’s a good or bad thing. There are also some notable VAs in this anime, like Akari Kitou, Konomi Kohara, and Sumire Uesaka. Each one of them has had their own big roles and their talent made this show a bit more tolerable. The music and sounds throughout the show, however, is a problem. It uses the wrong sounds at the wrong time. It fails to find the right emotion for the scene multiple times. This wrong use of sounds is recurring and can be unsettling. The soundtracks are catchy, so I’ll give this a 3.
Art
The art in the background gives a tranquil feeling. Definitely one of the better things in the series. However, there are some backgrounds and color combos that look like they were made in Microsoft 3d builder. The character designs are also one of the worst things I’ve seen. I’m not sure how people believe that these designs are cute and all. It’s expected during the hard times currently, but I’ve seen hentais with better character design than this crap. Its oversaturated colors and creepy looking eyes with their simplistic face structure make it hard to look at the half-decent scenery that was before my eyes. I also hate the blushes on this anime. Everytime someone blushes in this anime, it is represented by a bunch of red lines lazily stroked across the face. This is neither aesthetic nor appealing, and it looks disgusting. 2.
Characters
Characters are another black spot in the series. We have Nasa, and he acts like a clueless 11 year old around Tsukasa, the girl he fawns over. He’s absolutely hopeless in his love life and it is cringeworthy to watch the moves he makes on Tsukasa. And his personality? A textbook hopeless loner nerd, except without the harem, but still perverted. This is somehow meant to be “relatable” to the audience. What else? Oh, he’s smart? And guess why? He’s named Nasa! He felt obliged to become smart because his name was Nasa, which happened to be the name of the American Space Agency. I’ve heard many stupid explanations from anime, but this takes the cake. So let’s say he actually gets his goal, studies hard, and becomes a billionaire. If I were to see a billionaire with a scientific discovery, I’d still be reminded if they have some weird name. Like Stephen Hawking, despite him making so many discoveries, in the end he’s known for being disabled. Another weird thing about this show is that even though they bother to add a smart personality, it is almost never projected throughout the show. I actually forgot about his “smart” personality 7 episodes in until I decided to look back at the first episode, which shows how subtle and unnecessary this trait was.
Now let’s look at Tsukasa, the most lazily written character. Her personality is quite questionable. She decides to save Nasa, a random guy at the moment, from getting hit by a truck and just survives. They don’t bother explaining why this happens until the very end. And like any other logical character, decides to marry this random person he saved 2 years later, because who cares about developing relationships when they can just skip to the end? There’s no effort put into developing her, either, as she still has no foreseeable characteristics or backstory. Oh yeah, let's make her underage, too. She’s 16 while Nasa’s 18, and they’re getting married… Cute, right? I get that Japan has a low age of consent, but that itself is messed up on its own. The intention for her existence is to give the perfect girl that the audience can suck-up to. Nasa and Tsukasa’s relationship goes nowhere as well, as after they get married in the first episode. The episodes after consist of either introducing side characters, Nasa fantasizing things to do with Tsukasa and failing, or doing “fiance” things like picking out a wedding ring, introducing each other’s families, and kissing.
The side characters are unappealing as well, just whiny and annoying characters that provide random moments of fanservice. Let’s look into each of these side characters. First, we have Kaname. Kaname is Nasa’s friend and doesn’t make fun of his name. Awww, wholesome. Her entire existence, however, is to provide more fanservice to the audience, as she cleans Nasa’s bath while he’s still in the bath and makes fun of his penis. Her presence is an inconvenience and makes the show more uncomfortable. There’s her big sister, Aya, too. The reason for her existence is to have a random onee-chan feeling to the show. Now we have a textbook pervert and a textbook onee-chan. Really. The parents are pretty boring as well in their little appearance. If anything, they are a nuisance to the screen as they are constantly loud and worrying and I just can’t stand them.
Now we can look at Tsukasa’s side of characters. There’s Chitose, the generic imouto/tsundere. She is the wannabe conflict in an episode, but after that, she’s just a whiny grudge that I despise every time she appears on the screen. And of course, they had to inject more generic themes, with her wanting to marry Tsukasa as well, adding an unnecessary yuri relationship that doesn’t even go anywhere. Another piece to glue into this mess. The maids in this show are really just there to be clueless and don’t have any meaning to them. All in all the side characters are a mess and uninteresting and exist only for the point of making the audience uncomfortable.
Overall the characters are either annoying and have no sense to them or they exist for giving unnecessary fanservice. 1.
Enjoyment
I wasn’t able to find enjoyment in this show. As stated before, it relies on awkward situations and fanservice to keep the audience engaged. The show doesn’t even know itself what it wants to be, as it switches between random moments of fanservice and wholesome moments. It’s hard to tell if they wanted Tonikaku to be cute or uncomfortable to watch. It made me uncomfortable how they run time off of the clock making sexual jokes or giving compilations of Nasa failing to develop the little relationship that he has. It relies on the exploitation of an otaku’s fantasy of a girl just coming up to their door and wanting to marry him, and him not being able to do anything with the relationship to entertain the audience. This is yet another 1.
TL;DR
Story - 1/10: SOL so it’s not expected of a plot, but the premise is just plain stupid and the SOL is unfunny and tries too hard to reach out to the younger generation.
Sound - 3/10: Pretty good OP/ED, but the song choices feel off during most scenes.
Art - 2/10: Half-decent background/scenery, but the character designs are creepy and the art is oversaturated.
Characters - 1/10: The characters either have no explanation or have tropes that aren’t used throughout the entire show. Side characters are inconvenient and give occasional fanservice as their purpose.
Enjoyment - 1/10: The show doesn’t know itself, as it either switches around from cute to lewd moments in random intervals. Uncomfortable to watch.
Overall
Tonikaku tried hard to be different, but it couldn’t. It had no potential to be something and yet it tried to be something else. I suffered through Tonikaku. It’s a bad show that relied on random “cute” moments and unfunny situations in order to keep the audience engaged. Tonikaku truly wanted to be something, but in the end, it was a cliche mess. A cliche mess with uncomfortable characters, unbearable sounds, and eye-killing artstyle, and I’m glad it’s over.
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