Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms premiere brought us something that I didn’t expect so early on in the year: an insufferable lead character. Mona Kawai was born with so much charm that everything and everyone simply levitated towards her. She was never rejected in any way so when a new student joins her class and begins to ignore her, she is crushed. To make herself feel better, she resorts to a simple strategy involving harassment.
Now, I generally don’t mind a character who is annoying. Perhaps Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms anime fails at conveying how amazing Mona is and perhaps the story will be further hashed out down the road. But we are talking about the first episode, during which I felt no sympathy for her whatsoever. She was simply loud and trying to greedily cover up for her insecurities.
On the other hand, Medaka was somewhat more tolerable. His backstory, heir to the cat shrine, came out of nowhere and felt a bit like taking the easy road out. It did set up the main plot twist for the entire story early on, so that was nice.
Visually, Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms anime is nothing remarkable. There was not a lot of action, but we did get quite a few cuts that minimized the movement and showed us only the aftermath (Mona falling, the school nurse visit), along with a few weirdly-placed mouths. The colors felt a little bit washed out, but I could be comparing them to titles that are similar story-wise. Voice acting fully carried some scenes.
If you loved Nagatoro or Takagi-san, you might like this anime, but for me, all the charm it had (pun intended) was kind of overshadowed by Mona’s pushiness. I fully admit that I am most likely not the target audience, partly because of how much I disliked Mona, and partly because of I sense a love triangle forming. I wish it had a bit more comedy that didn’t feel forced and maybe more space to develop these characters. Chances are that things will improve as the season goes on, but for the premiere episode, I am giving Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms anime a 4/10.
Watch the first episode on Crunchyroll.
© RanKuze, KODANSHA/“Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms” Production Committee.
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