Review: Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai! (Uzaki-chan Wants to Hangout!)
Going into watching this, I wasn’t expecting all that much. I was dragged into watching it because I have a friend that liked the manga. While the first few episodes were rough, I thought that Uzaki-chan got good around episode three. A lot of people were probably turned off from watching this anime since it got turned into an online culture war issue for some reason. I don’t blame them, if I didn’t have any friends that I knew liked this series, I wouldn’t touch this show with a ten-foot pole. Past the cliche jokes about Uzaki’s chest size, this show is very hilarious and worth watching if you’re into comedies.
There isn’t much plot to Uzaki-chan. It’s a ‘teasing girl’ show — if you don’t like those types of shows, I would pass on this anime. While my favorite ‘teasing girl’ series is Nagatoro, Uzaki has its own qualities that make it better in some ways. The main character in this series, Sakurai, is my favorite guy from any ‘teasing girl’ series. He is my favorite character in this show. His Squidward-esque conversations with Uzaki are the funniest part of the show. The fact that he isn’t a coward or a loser makes it all the more better when Uzaki attempts to tease him for the most minute reasons.
The supporting cast for Uzaki-chan is small, but they play a huge role in ‘creating’ situations for Uzaki to tease Sakurai and him to flip out at her. At the cafe where Sakurai works at, the cafe owner (who looks like John Bolton) and his daughter (who goes to the same school as Uzaki and Sakurai) take note of how hilarious the two are after seeing them interact once. They go to the point of hiring Uzaki to work at the same restaurant in order to have these interactions happen more often. They’re unique characters since they aren’t breaking the fourth wall, but at the same time are purposely getting the two to be together more often, for their entertainment and ours. Sakurai’s friend, Sakaki, while being a much more minor role, also openly tries to get the main two together. These three are stand-ins for the viewer, and are as ‘in’ on the joke as anyone watching Uzaki-chan.
Going into watching this anime without reading the manga, I didn’t expect much. The art style of this show doesn’t help itself at all. Uzaki looks like a bowling ball with bug eyes, has a pair of jumbo yumyums, and was dressed like a Mennonite the first time I saw her. The show surprisingly doesn’t make the enormous size of her milkers the butt of every joke, which makes it watchable. Maybe I’m just a prude, but the skits that were centered around her boobs were the least funny ones. If Uzaki-chan used her boobs as a crutch every episode in order to try to get a cheap laugh, I would’ve probably dropped it. Good thing it was funny enough to find better ways to tell a joke. The fact that this show isn’t that horny as it looks and is more focused on making you laugh would not be that noticeable if you only went by what was shown on social media sites. It doesn’t help that the anime is popular in some controversial circles on the internet, which generates unwarranted animosity for it.
I don’t know what about it (other than Uzaki’s G-cups) makes this show a point of contention among different factions of anime watchers, but throughout the airing of this anime, I was several times exposed to it on social media. I haven’t actually dived deep into this phenomenon since I value what little sanity I have left, but Uzaki-chan has become another battlefield for the never-ending online culture war. From what I know, most ‘SJWs’ (only using this outdated term since I can’t think of a better one) don’t like this anime because ‘anti-SJWs’ (again, only using this outdated term since I can’t think of a better one) like it. I can’t think of any other reason why, since the actual nature of this anime is quite tame, compared to other anime you could get pissed off about. Uzaki-chan doesn’t even have the ‘feminine boy’ character that far-right anime fans seem to love (or pretend to do as an inside joke). This anime doesn’t have anything openly political to say either. The most political it gets is when Uzaki rants about people who say that mint chocolate ice cream tastes like toothpaste (the Uzaki-chan anime twitter account does make a joke about this, asking viewers if they’re part of the ‘Chocomin Party’ or the ‘Anti-chocomin Party’). Either way, Uzaki-chan doesn’t deserve to be a focal point of the online culture war — there are far worse anime that should take that spot.
Uzaki-chan was a pleasant surprise for me. While the anime starts out with some stinkers of episodes, it eventually finds its footing and makes for a good comedy anime. I know it might be hard to convince people to watch this show due to the discourse around it, but if you’re a fan of comedy anime, you might like Uzaki-chan. Just don’t pay attention to anyone who talks about it on Twitter.
70/100
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