(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Our token adaptation of a romance shoujo manga for the season.
Characters
Erika, our heroine, is the titular “Wolf Girl”. Meaning, the girl who cries wolf : she keeps spinning out the wildest lies as a desperate cry for attention. As you’d expect, this bites her back in the ass consistently. Heck, even the episode’s title makes it clear from the start (“Liar – Caught in her own trap”).
Aki & Karin are her new “friends” by default, i.e. the only girls left in her new class who weren’t already in cliques by the time she arrived. So she did as she always does : try and keep up with their conversation, even if that means lying all the time. Unfortunately, they’re “mature” gals who keep talking about their superficial relationships with their boyfriends, so Erika felt compelled to one-up them with this super-cool and perverted boyfriend of hers that she totally has.
Ayumi, Erika’s one actual friend (but unfortunately in another class), would very much like her to give it a rest already. It’s been two months, and it’s obvious Aki & Marin have their doubts about the boyfriend’s existence. At the very least, Ayumi making fake phone calls from him to Erika doesn’t cut it anymore, and her phone bill’s running off quite a lot, so she’s out.
Kyoya, a random handsome dude Erika stumbles on in the street. Here, stay still while she takes your picture, and be utterly confused as she runs away. There, that’ll be enough proof for the gals, right ? Wait, what do you mean he’s attending the same high school, and is famous enough to have gained the “Prince” nickname ? Oh, crap.
To Erika’s surprise, when she eventually comes clean to him, he’s actually fine with pretending to be her boyfriend. In exchange… well, he’s always wanted a dog. So spin around and bark.
Production Values
Perfectly alright for this kind of thing. It sometimes goes a bit abstract, and sometimes giving Erika random wolf ears doesn’t make the metaphor any less strained, but it sells the jokes and that’s what matters.
Overall Impression
In shoujo romance, there are basically two types of stories : either maladjusted shy kids take their time to get together, or the girl falls for an sadistic jerkass who blackmails her into an abusive relationship. We’re firmly in the second camp here.
The good news is that this series is actually fun instead of rape-tastic. Most of Erika’s troubles are self-inflicted, and Kyoya spends more time disentangling her from those messes than really pushing her boundaries. And while her misadventures are hilarious, she really needs to grow up ; if he can be the catalyst for that, then so be it.
A pleasant surprise. (Although I really shouldn’t be ; shoujo romances have often been well worth my while recently.)
