(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Slice-of-life comedy about the daily struggles of an asocial girl.
(Unlike what the absurdly long title would lead you to expect, it’s adapted from a manga, not a light novel series.)
Characters
Kuroki, our protagonist. An introverted nerd who hasn’t managed to hold a proper conversation with anyone outside her family since entering high school a couple of months ago. (Not that it went much better in middle school.) Even saying goodbye to the teacher manning the schoolgate or ordering food at the local WcDonald’s is an ordeal. She doesn’t understand why making friends or getting a boyfriend is so HARD in real-life, when she’s so good at it in games.
By the way, I hope you can withstand her pathetic, self-deluding and aggressive inner monologue, because it drones on and on throughout the whole episode.
Our only other major character introduced in this episode is Tomoki, her younger brother, who’s completely normal and a bit annoyed by his sister randomly barging into his room to passive-aggressively demand some help.
There’s a group of four of her classmates that she keeps bumping into (not that they ever notice her), with her abusive narration reeking of jealousy at their easy socializing.
Production Values
Not very high, but studio Silver Link know how to spruce up a pedestrian narrative with lots of nifty effects (sometimes veering on the downright abstract) to keep it visually interesting.
Overall Impression
Hello, cringe comedy ! It’s basically an entire show based on mocking how socially inept its protagonist is, without pulling any punches. Kuroki is clearly responsible for a good part of her own misery, and her misguided efforts to better herself are obviously doomed to fail. She’s a walking trainwreck and this is painful to watch.
It’s also hilarious, fortunately. It helps that a lot of this feels authentic and barely exagerated from actual nerd behaviour : it hurts to watch because it’s true, and a good chunk of the audience has been in similar places. And while she’s not shown in a good light, to put it mildly, Kuroki still manages to be an endearing character to watch. We want to see her get a bit better, although she’ll probably fall flat on her face repeatedly on the way.
This strikes a difficult balance between its uncompromising depiction of its protagonist, and avoiding to be too annoying ; while there’s room for this to go horribly awry later on, so far so good.
