Dog & Scissors (Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

The adventures of a deeply eccentric novel author and her biggest fanboy… who’s a dog.
(Adapted from a light novel series, if you hadn’t guessed.)

Characters

Kazuhito Harumi, used to be a normal high school boy… well, as normal as a guy who spends all his money on books can be. One day, he’s killed in a diner robbery gone horribly wrong. He wakes up as a dog, for some unknown reason.

Kirihime Natsuno (nom de plume : Shinobu Akiyama), his favourite author. She hears his thoughts non-stop after his transformation, and tracks him down in order to get some peace. She refrains from killing him once she figures out he’s the same boy who saved her life during the robbery ; she’s obviously grateful and offers him to stay at her place. She remains very cold and borderline sadistic throughout the episode, though. Also, she carries a pair of scissors at her thigh at all times, hence the series’ title.

There are lots of other characters shown in the OP/ED sequences and making cameos at various point (including an idol who seems to be in every commercial), but their significance has yet to become apparent.

Production Values

Quite nice, actually. There’s some decent atmosphere, and it’s good enough to sell the jokes. The OP sequence is fun and catchy, which is quite an achievement since it starts with Marina Inoue rapping.

Overall Impression

Well, I’ll give it that : it’s better than I expected from the title and outline. There are some decent jokes, and the story happens to be way less stupidly than you’d have thought.

But it’s still not very good. Way too much time is spent on stale unfunny bust size jokes, and the S&M subtext is so blunt and generic that it becomes unsavoury. Moreover, there’s no sense that the story is going anywhere : sure, Natsuno is already going after the killer, and there’s the mystery of how Harumi became a dog in the first place, but none of these directions seem particularly promising ; this doesn’t feel like a premise that can support a 12-episode series.

In another season I might have given it more of a chance, as there were a few good laughs here, but I can’t justify keeping watching it.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013.

Published by

Jhiday

I've been kinda blogging about anime for years... but mostly on forums (such as RPG.net's Tangency) and other sites. This site is an archive for all that stuff, just in case.

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