More NSFW Goodness! (Seriously, Don’t Read This At Work) – Hajimete No Gal Mid-season Review
Well, at least it took them a 1:35 to get to that stage. Although to be fair, that’s all in Junichi’s mind. So this show is turning out to be an interesting albeit cringy rom-com. The censorship has surpassed that point I typically cite where the censorship for money factor pisses me off, to the level it’s just damned funny. Hajimete no Gal does this unique style of character escalation that makes me think of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Instead of the villains being more and more outrageous it’s the love interests becoming more and more bat shit insane. But I’ll get into the other characters after a quick venting. The one fat friend, Minoru Kobayakawa is absolute garbage. I’m just gonna go ahead and cite this as the genuine one thing that adds zero business value because it’s just absolutely insane how much of a pedophile he is throughout this show. We have him going from making casual comments about 4th-5th grade being prime age, to him watching videos of little girls, to actually having a map with heart stickers marking where little kids live.
Ok, back to the plot because I have to crank this out and bounce to a 40k game real quick. We have a number of interesting Gals introduced to us who for one reason or another are interested in our MC, most of the times romantically. At the very least psychotically. Beyond Yukana Yame who throughout this show seems to give off the impression she’s actually a maiden, we have first up to bat, Ranko Honjou, Yukana’s BFFle. This tanned Gal is actually in love with Yukana and serves as an interesting rival to Junichi. She even goes so far to attempt to rape him to keep Yukana to herself. Junichi gives up a great surprise by not just jumping at the first chance to get laid, but actually sticks to his guns that he wants his first time to be with Yukana.
After this we have Yui Kashii, who sees to be this girl, sweet, smart, and active serving as a role model character and seeming to be in love with Junichi as well. What we find is that she is a closet Gal queen who is a right proper bitch viewing everyone and everyone as her servants, the teacher being a butler, her “friends” being maids, Junichi’s crew being the royal guard and Junichi himself being…her dog. When cornered and confessed to upon the school roof, he is saved by the crew and surprisingly, Ranko who blackmail Kashii with the knowledge of her identity as “Boa-Sama” to have her leave Junichi the feth alone.
Most recently for the midseason we have been shown the resurgence of Nene Fujinoki, the adorable childhood friend a year younger than Junichi who looks like a middle school kid smuggling watermelons in her sweater. Nene decides to drastically change her appearance and speech pattern (which is absolutely fething hilarious) to that of a Gal to win Junichi’s attention, even challenging Yukana to a boob-off, leading to a monologue about war and peace and eternal happiness. This was a bit more rough to me of an episode because of how try hard Nene was being but surprisingly she came out of it as a damn good rival to Yukana. Most importantly of all was the fact that even though Nene appeared naked and LITERALLY begging for it, Junichi again turns down the easy win to stay true to Yukana.
Bringing us back to the main couple, again I was on the fence about this show given the cringe and ecchi but god help me the laughs and Junichi not being scum has made this absolutely cool for me (genuinely, he would give Iron Man from Interviews with Demi-Chans a run for his money). The second episode had Yukana and Junichi going to kareoke which his friends had him thinking was a substitute for a love hotel. He even goes in for a kiss which she deflects and leaves us thinking she might just be an unpopped cherry and might even have never kissed someone before. Junichi makes me proud by having a self control level over 9000. In the end, in this interesting world of temptation, he really only has eyes for Yukana and coming from an emotionally dead automaton such as myself, I gotta respect that.
I’m definitely keeping with the show The sound is entertaining, especially for the censoring and the voice acting has me cracking up. Art wise the show took a bit of a dip, especially in the last episode but it’s still bearable and not bad enough to give you too much of a pause. Regardless, I’ve found this cast to be entertaining and look forward to seeing if the show will keep my interest or fall off and be that standard fanfare. Beyond that, I hope you weren’t reading this in the middle of work, or where your parents are nearby/over your shoulder. Let me know what you thought with a comment and if you enjoyed leave a like and take a look at our other articles, I promise they aren’t all ecchi/cringe. Who knows, maybe just maybe you’ll end up as cool as this guy.
