Animisery – A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things)

Since time immemorial, anime has wondered what would happen in an unpopular guy and popular girl were paired together in some sort of unholy union known as “friends to lovers”. Again and again, anime attempts to normalize this cruel bastardization of a story in different forms be it My Dress Up Darling, More Than a Married Couple, but not Lovers, Hokkaido Gals are Super Adorable, and so on and so forth. Wait, those are all actually just shows about gyaru being friends with guys who may or may not have the personality of dirty dishwasher thrown on some already damp cardboard! Well, anime KIND OF wants to have stories about unpopular guys with popular girls and usually the girls in question are of the gyaru variety. I’m not even mad about it; all the shows I mentioned are fun enough in a vacuum. Now here’s another one called Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? that the people I follow on Xitter have been all up in arms about. The usual cause for complaint is “why not have them be lesbians”, “why is this stuff all the same”, and the odd complaint of “why is a k-pop group doing the OP” as if Tower of God didn’t have Stray Kids as the OP and ED and we were all pretty chill with that. There are two episodes out so let’s give some uninformed opinions on them.

The core premise of Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? or Otaku ni Yasashii Gal wa Inai!? is simple: main character Takuya Seo, or Otaku-kun as he is more commonly known, loves a children’s anime for young girls called Glittermon. He’s obsessive about collecting merch and brings his special Glittermon eraser to school only to have his gyaru seatmate Kotoko Ijichi borrow it and for a world wind friendship to spiral out after Ijichi introduced Otaku-kun to class queen Kei Amane who is a closet otaku herself. From there forth, Otaku-kun builds his relationships with Ijichi who is wholly ignorant about Glittermon and Amane who is hugely in denial about her interests. It’s an interesting dynamic on paper as Ijichi has an absolute heart of gold that only wants to know more about Otaku-kun’s interest just because of the sheer raw passion he exudes when discussing it. She’s so determined to know more in a delightfully naive way that makes me wonder if the original mangaka really was seeking out some hardcore wish fulfillment or maybe they are genuinely that kind hearted. It’s also just a piece of entertainment so I shouldn’t be scrutinizing that much, I guess.

The episodes are some typical otaku culture anime tripe from then on after the premise is let loose. Otaku-kun takes his new friends to an Animate to buy figures. Otaku-kun watches an anime with them. Otaku-kun realizes that girls were in his room. Kind of a yawnfest to be honest but it’s still passable fun to just see how Ijichi and Amane react to these scenarios. Ijichi’s naive attitude and Amane’s constant deflecting are entertaining particularly because of how they can bounce off each other in the first two episodes while Otaku-kun just stands in the background and goes “A-A-Amane is so into anime… s-sugoi…” or whatever. It’s only been two episodes in so Otaku-kun’s adoration of anime has only been his real personality quirk so I’m hoping things will pick up for him and that he’ll be fleshed out more. There is a small moment where he reflects on how he was treated in the past as far as it concerns his anime obsession and it’s a shallow flashback for sure but maybe it’s just a seed from which a thriving backstory plant will flourish with delicious backstory fruit for us to eat. Or maybe it’ll just all be a big ol’ nothing burger for our shonen romcom meal that we got at WcDonald’s.

The animation is solid enough and oddly fixated on rendering close ups of the girl’s and their faces in 8k 120 FPS with every instance that it can, it seems. I’m not unwelcome to this as I certainly don’t want to stare at Otaku-kun’s eyes especially not when Ijichi has some magnificently adorable eyes during her close ups. It’s weird but I was frankly transfixed by them trying to figure out what the layers to the artistry were. She’s doing her typical gyaru thing where cleavage was visibly showing and I had to figure out the secrets of her eyes. Maybe that should tell you how vivid they were or maybe how unamused I am with fanservice at this point. It could even be both!

They also went pretty hard on rendering the lips too. For example, Amane had a fraction of one of her cuspids showing just because TMS Entertainment said “yeah this mouth animation is going to have to carry the show, I guess” or something of the sort. Again, could be my own brand of hyperfixation.

At two episodes in, there doesn’t appear to be a keen focus on the rom in this romcom as Otaku-kun somewhat reflects on how wonderful he thinks Amane is and then dotes on how sexy Ijichi is as she lies on his bed. There’s some groundwork for strife to come into play because I doubt (but it wouldn’t be unwelcome if it did!) this is going to turn into a love polycule with the three of them. The last moment of the second episode sets up a decision for Otaku-kun that could easily allow for some drama but given what I’ve seen so far, I can’t imagine it become a dire issue for him. I could hazard a guess that it’ll be played for more of a com than a rom variety of episode but I wouldn’t be against it if it subverted my own expectations.

So far, Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? doesn’t seem as if it’s aiming to be a revolutionary story but it’s also early on so I reserve my right to give a final decisive judgment. I’m having fun with the show as I generally do with every gyaru anime simply because I like gyaru characters. I’ll more than likely stick with OtaGal just for more Ijichi and to witness what Otaku-kun’s next dorky activity with the pair will be. Maybe we’ll even see his parents!? A man can dream.

Also I like i-dle so you know. I didn’t mind having a k-pop girl group doing an opening or anything.

Thanks for reading! Go check out my anime podcasts Otaku Melancholy and Weeb Belong Together wherever you get your podcasts but here’s some Spotify links for you! Let me know what your thoughts are on Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? and what spring 2026 seasonals that you’re watching! I can’t wait to read from you!