Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Anime Review

Posted on by Karandi
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Not For Me But Not All That Bad

You know that feeling you get when you watch something and you know it is fine there’s nothing technically wrong with what it is delivering, but you just aren’t in to it? That’s the feeling I had for the majority of Hitoribocchi’s run. While I was initially intrigued by the set up because I was also an incredibly shy person going to school and Bocchi’s obvious social anxiety was something I related to I quickly found any connection I had with her dissipating and none of the rest of the cast really grabbed my interest.

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I think part of the problem for me at least was that the anime played each of these characters and their various social issues for laughs and while I found their quirks interesting, I didn’t find them funny. Even exaggerated to such a degree I mostly found these characters in need of support rather than chuckles and largely couldn’t get into what was being played out.

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Bocchi’s social anxiety is actually pretty well presented with her legs shaking and cramping, her voice freezing or stuttering, and when push comes to shove her stomach giving out and causing her to throw up in social settings. However what is less well presented is her manner of dealing with these things. Her list making of ideas that go from idiotic to useless is supposed to be charming I assume but mostly it just made me want to shake her.

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Also, so many characters either not acknowledging her severe anxiety or responding to her antics just seemed weird. While I get that she isn’t friends with every one in the class by the end of the season, Bocchi’s behaviour is erratic at best and you would think there would be more of a reaction to it. Then again, when you see the crowd shots of the rest of the class there are clearly a whole bunch of oddballs in one room (I really wanted to know more about the girl who wears the eye mask every lesson) so maybe Bocchi’s behaviour isn’t that out there compared to theirs.

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When you throw in a couple of characters I genuinely despised, such as the useless excuse of a teacher who is terrified of a student who has never done anything outwardly hostile, then any desire I had to try to connect with the anime as it continued quickly faded away. By around the mid-season mark I was more or less over this one but continued with it to see how they concluded Bocchi’s friend quest.

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Now, despite the negativity of those previous paragraphs, it should be noted that lots of people found Hitoribocchi a truly charming watch and really loved the support cast, particularly Aru. Which really means overall enjoyment hinges on whether or not you find these characters cute and charming and like to laugh along with their antics or whether you find the entire thing really tragic and find the comedy elements intrusive.

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Even for me, I found Nako, the first friend Bocchi makes, to be the most stable element in Hitoribocchi. While she isn’t as exuberant or interesting as some of the other cast members, she routinely gets the best moments as she interacts with Bocchi, consoles her, supports her, and occasionally messes with her just to see the reaction. Between Bocchi and Nako there did seem to be a genuine friendship building over the course of the series and when the anime focused on that relationship I found it to be at its strongest.

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However, the self-declared world’s greatest vice-president Aru is another story. I literally found every scene that focused on her and her poor luck to be the least interesting moments and they were only slightly less frustrating than the stammering teacher. The exchange student who wants to be a ninja ended up somewhere between Aru and Nako as some moments with her were pretty adorable and others were just silly (though whether you find that charming or eye-roll worthy is a personal opinion).

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Realistically the character designs are cute and appealing as many of these cute girl shows are with each character having a distinct enough design. The colour scheme was also pretty nice with some bright backgrounds and accessories.

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There’s nothing wrong with this anime. Those who like cute girl slice of life stories will probably eat it up. For me though, this one was more of a mis-fire and I kind of regretted picking it up by the end of the season.

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Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Review Episode 12

Posted on by Karandi
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The End of the Year But Not The Challenge

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Hitoribocchi Episode 12

The school year ends and Bocchi has a total of 6 friends, plus a new smart phone. You would call that progress only it is one step forward two steps back as she still can’t befriend Kurai, Kai is still not speaking to her, and when it comes to a second year self-introduction, despite her best efforts and pep-talk, the end result is still throwing up from nerves.

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Not that I don’t sympathise with someone whose stomach rebels at the idea of having to speak in front of others. It is one of the more relatable facets of Bocchi’s personality and one that I wish they had spent more time on dealing with. Just making friends doesn’t make that type of social anxiety disappear and seeing her work through her actually issues would have been nice.

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As usual we get some classroom silliness, this episode mostly revolving around using their smart phones to photograph and record one another before Kurai takes centre stage and passes out from a fever. I do like how they tie things together in this series as we see the ninja girl dive into crane making in an instant but otherwise this is a pretty standard course for the series.

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It was however a fantastic episode for reaction shots with a lot of great expressions from Bocchi and from the other cast members.

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Clearly this story can continue on given we’ve got another two years of middle school for Bocchi but I’ll honestly say that even if it was to get another anime series I wouldn’t watch it. I’m very much done with this set up and these characters and ready to move on. That said, I can appreciate why this one has charmed others this season.

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Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Review Episode 11

Posted on by Karandi
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Money Can’t Solve This Problem

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Hitoribocchi Episode 11

It seems weird in the penultimate episode to introduce a new character that within one episode grabs Bocchi’s attention and is befriended but at the same time this episode had a lot of heart so despite the weird timing I can’t really fault it. Hitoribocchi does like its socially awkward characters and the rich girl air-head who is lonely that they introduce certainly fits the mould they’ve been following so far.

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The running joke of the episode is that neight Bocchi, nor the rich girl, have anything resembling an understanding of how the world works. We’ve known this from the beginning about Bocchi in terms of her plans to tell people the class was cancelled or similar rather than facing reality. To see another student join her as a partner in crime and misunderstandings is possibly pushing it a bit.

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Anyway, in order to avoid changing classes the rich girl decides Bocchi should just buy the school and so gets her a job folding paper cranes. Understandably, the job doesn’t pay much and then the two realise that buying the school is more or less impossible given it isn’t for sale. But, friendship forms through the misadventure and ultimately they all decide to use Bocchi’s limited wages to take a photo together.

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There’s a real sweetness to the overall story here and the photo of friends and the courage the girl gains to message her parents and to tell them how she’s feeling are a solid way to end the episode. As much as Hitoribocchi hasn’t really been for me this season I can really appreciate what this episode aimed to achieve.

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Now the question is, what does the final episode do to end the story. I’m assuming they will finish the school year but what will the characters have gained in the process?

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Hitoribocchi no Marumau Seikatsu Review Episode 10

Posted on by Karandi
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The Student Becomes The Master’s Friend

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Hitoribocchi Episode 10

I kind of knew I was over this series when, in a week where I was tight for time, this was one of the first episodes I just skipped watching with the intention of getting back to it. Now the anime is finished and I’m only just watching episode 10 with two more to go and to be honest, I’m kind of indifferent as to whether I finish it or not.

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Oh, don’t look at me like that.

That said, Hitoribocchi did deliver a pretty solid tenth episode where we finally deal with the master-student dynamic between Bocchi and Sotoka after Bocchi makes friends with the pancake girls from last episode and Sotoka gets really jealous. Okay, it’s kind of silly but it does force what little plot we have here forward. It also pushes Aru and Nako into supporting roles that allows them to both operate at their best bringing a few genuine laughs to the sidelines of this episode.

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Outside of the progress on the friend quest, we get the usual high school antics with the closing ceremony, followed by a shrine visit for New Year’s, and morning greetings. There’s nothing overly new to be seen but if you are enjoying the cast than seeing them in the different situations will be fun enough.

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My takeaway was that Bocchi has some pretty incredible origami skills (then again I think most people who can actually do origami are incredible given I tend to get stuck midway through the directions of most creations). Her new style Shuriken are pretty cool and watching Sotoka and Bocchi running from the room to throw it together as friends was very smile worthy.

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Even my cynical self admits that is pretty cute.
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Why I’m Enjoying Senryuu Shoujo More Than Hitoribocchi This Spring Anime Season

Posted on by Karandi
Friday's Feature

I don’t usually directly compare two anime, largely because each anime needs to be viewed on its own merit. Whether the story is similar or a character follows a comparable arc, if an anime is enjoyable in its own right, let it be enjoyable. And yet there just seems to be a reason to discuss Senryuu Shoujo and Hitoribocchi as the two share some remarkable similarities.

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From that point of view, I’m not going to argue that Senryuu Shoujo is the better of the two anime I’m discussing today, simply that I’m enjoying it more. However, I’m certain there are other viewers out there who feel differently and I’d love to hear your take on either show in the comments below.

For those who haven’t followed either show this season here’s a brief break down.

Senryuu Shoujo

Senryuu Shoujo is listed on MAL as a Slice of Life/Comedy about a girl who doesn’t speak but communicates through poems and hangs out with another poetry lover, ex-delinquent Eiji as part of a club at school. It currently has a score of 7.34 and is a short anime format with each episode only lasting 12 minutes.

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Hitoribocchi

Hitoribocchi is also listed on MAL as a Slice of Life/Comedy and this time we’re following a very shy girl who has gone to a different school to her friend from middle school and now, for reasons, has to make friends with everyone in her new class. It currently has a score of 7.53 on MAL and each episode is a standard 23 minute length.

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From the description you can tell that neither anime sits in my comfort zone of happiness. They aren’t the kind of thing that by nature I find entertaining. Yet each season I try a handful of comedy or slice of life anime and add a few to my watch list, because every now and then you end up with something like My Roommate is a Cat that just utterly charms me and I’d miss out entirely if I didn’t watch a lot of shows that are just fine for those who like the genre, but don’t do much for me.

Keep in mind that ‘March Comes in Like a Lion‘, an anime I regularly rave about, is in fact a Slice of Life. So while I don’t click with the genre as a whole, when it grabs my attention it really draws me right in.

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That said, it should be fairly clear if you’ve been reading my episode reviews of either Senryuu Shoujo or Hitoribocchi that I’m not exactly loving either one. To be honest, both will be forgotten almost the minute the last episode airs with just enough lag time for me to write my whole season review. But, in the rank on MAL, number of viewers, and just the amount of blog coverage, it seems Hitoribocchi is the preferred show out of these two.

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Why do I prefer Senryuu Shoujo?

There are two main reasons why I prefer Senryuu Shoujo.

The first comes down to the run time. With both anime being limited in scope and content and being reasonably formulaic in their approach of setting up the scenario or gag for the episode and then running with it, I find that Hitoribocchi stretches each moment that little bit too far. I’ve mentioned it before in an episode review and on Twitter, but if the episodes were half the length and more tightly paced, I’d enjoy the content a great deal more.

Particularly as I find my tolerance for Bocchi waning the longer an episode runs, if it ended at the 12 minute mark I’d probably find her sympathetic and adorable whereas by the 23 minute mark I’m more annoyed at her.

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Senryuu Shoujo with its 12 minute run time perfectly hits the mark. The episodes are bite sized. Not much happens but nothing overstays its welcome either. As a result, the episode always ends when I’m pleasantly in the groove of an episode and so leaves me wanting the next one. They say timing is everything in comedy and to be honest a lot of my preference on the two anime comes down to this factor.

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Then we have our two female leads, Bocchi and Nanako.

In a recent review of one of the Hitoribocchi episodes, I was pretty scathing of Bocchi’s character. She whines and whimpers her way through almost every encounter. While her shyness and awkwardness began as relatable and a sympathetic character trait, as the series has progressed there’s just no other aspect to Bocchi. She has no hobbies or likes or dislikes. She has friends now, who she is grateful for, but has no trouble abandoning them in pursuit of making another friend.

She’s also incredibly self-centred and rarely thinks about the feelings of others because she’s so wrapped up in her own anxious worrying about how people see her.

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Now, if her character wasn’t being played for laughs in a school comedy, possibly I would be more sympathetic toward her. Given I was that incredibly shy person who struggled to speak in the company of strangers, who felt sick at the thought of having to speak in front of people, and most definitely avoided encounters that I was not comfortable with, I might have really connected with Bocchi’s character had they made the tone somewhat more serious. Instead though, I mostly see her start to tear up and feel she’s just a little bit pathetic rather than sympathetic and I’m finding it hard to really connect with Bocchi or any member of the cast.

That said, for viewers that do find Bocchi sympathetic, or just like her or the supporting cast, the viewing experience of Hitoribocchi will be considerably more entertaining.

Nanako from Senryuu Shoujo is a little less relatable but a lot more interesting as a lead. She doesn’t speak at all but expresses herself through facial expressions, body language, and through her poetry. While the gimmick is definitely gimmicky, and you do have to wonder sometimes where she pulls the board out from to write a poem, and how she wrote it that fast, she is by and large adorable. More than that, she’s positive about things and it pursuing a ‘romance’ with Eiji while enjoying her high school life.

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I did like that when we met her parents and got a bit of backstory, it was pointed out that Nanako was in fact bullied for not speaking when she was younger. While I would actually like the anime to delve into the drama a bit more and look at why she doesn’t speak and how this actually impacts on the day to day when she isn’t with those who accept her weird quirk, I get this one is a light comedy and wasn’t planning on being a deep dive into dealing with difference. Still, Nanako is an intriguing character but one who brings cuteness and light into most scenes and her interactions with Eiji are off the charts adorable.

While it might seem like splitting hairs, the shorter run time plus the more compelling, or at least less annoying, female lead makes Senryuu Shoujo my preferred slice of life/comedy anime from the Spring anime season.

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However, I get this is an entirely subjective opinion based on my own preferences and interpretations of the characters and story (as is pretty much everything on my blog so business as usual). Which is why I would love to hear from my readers whether they are preferring Senryuu Shoujo or Hitoribocchi this season. Or is there another slice of life/comedy anime that got your attention this season? Let me know in the comments below.

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Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Sikatsu Review Episode 9

Posted on by Karandi
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Curry and Pancakes For Friendship?

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Hitoribocchi Episode 9

We’re making pancakes and curry (not at the same time) in this episode of Hitoribocchi. Part of me wonders why anyone is actually staying friends with Bocchi given she seems to have absolutely nothing in her head and her first response to any kind of adversity is to cry (or at least tear up) but I guess that’s neither here nor there. I can get behind characters who are weak or socially awkward, but Bocchi lacks any kind of positive trait that I can latch onto. Unless sheer determination counts, but even then she needs a lot of encouragement to avoid running away.

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There’s also the matter of how self-involved she is. I get they are trying to have her come across as cute and awkward but just watching her interact with the group while cooking pancakes not once does she think of learning anything about anyone in that group. Her every thought is of how they see her and how she wants them to see her. And while this might actually be relatively realistic it just kind of made me feel a little tired watching her.

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I guess basically the premise of this anime never really worked for me, what few points about the lead I found charming got buried under repetition of all the points I don’t enjoy, and given the nature of the anime there’s almost no plot to hide behind. I just don’t find it enjoyable.

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As I was watching this particular episode someone came in and mentioned that the anime looked ‘wholesome’. They came in while the curry tasting section was on. I had to agree. It is wholesome and I can see why many would find it sweet, but at this point I am not clicking with it.

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Hitoribocchi continues to be an anime I hear a lot of positive chatter about and objectively I can see all the reasons people would enjoy this anime with its eclectic group of cute girls, pastel visuals, and standard school silliness framed by a simple goal of shy girl makes more friends, and if I’d connected with the cast at all it would probably be lovely.

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Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Review Episode 8

Posted on by Karandi
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Another friend quest begun.

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Episode 8

Bocchi is back at school for the second semester in episode 8 of Hitoribocchi.

Most things haven’t changed. She’s still friends with Nako and Aru and the ninja girl is still her apprentice but wants to be friends but doesn’t want to ask. Yet, the contrived goal of this series is for Bocchi to befriend everyone in the class and so begins her latest quest to befriend Kurai, though I’ve yet to see any reason why you’d want to be friends with her given almost every word out of her mouth is a criticism.

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So we get back to the problem of the central premise. As much as slice of life stories about shy girls making friends can work beautifully, the artificial instigation of this friend quest through Bocchi’s actual friend just cutting her off until she succeeded, looms over the entire story. In any class there are going to be people you just won’t get on with or don’t like and yet the condition insists she makes friends with everyone regardless.

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Doesn’t that seem a little forced and more importantly, won’t that make a lot of those friendships fake or shallow?

That kind of makes it hard to get behind Bocchi, as does the lack of development and depth to her character. We get she’s shy and anxious but they’ve given us no reason for the extreme nature of her social anxiety and while I’m happy to concede some people are just socially awkward, the exaggerated nature of Bocchi’s social dysfunction (with no one apparently willing to call her out on it) genuinely makes it hard to get drawn into this story.

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While this isn’t the worst show I’ve continued with this season, it is the one I’m having the least fun watching and the twenty minutes this week was more of the same with the minor highlight of watching Bocchi run away while jumping over imaginary hurdles to psyche herself up. That was actually pretty cute and funny.

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Hitoribocchi Review Episode 7

Posted on by Karandi
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Not quite the summer vacation she’s been dreaming of.

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Episode 7

The summer cliché episode hits us full force as Hitoribocchi ‘dazzles’ us with its less than stellar take on the first summer vacation. Bocchi and her friends decide to hang out and we get a trip to the pool and karaoke with fairly predictable outcomes before they decide to attempt ot drop an emotional bombshell but mostly it just makes me wonder once again about Kai and the challenge she set Bocchi. As much as I appreciate that Kai wanted Bocchi to make some friends, this scene is just idiotic and even if Bocchi gets through the challenge realistically that’s a friendship that has now been left dead in the water.

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On the brighter side, Hitoribocchi continues to give us some incredibly over the top facial expressions and reactions from Bocchi. They are perhaps my favourite part of this episode as she reels from one situation to the next.

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I did also like that her ‘plans’ continue to fail. The final plan to have a conversation with someone before the vacation by removing her tie didn’t go at all according to her simulation and I do think that was fairly relatable. I certainly have tried to think my way through a conversation before having it and then realised about two exchanges in that the rehearsal was completely off-base.

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As a whole package though I’m still finding this one a little hard to take and while there are some amusing moments to be found here there’s a lot that leaves things to be desired and overall it would just be nice if it were a little bit stronger as a story or the characters were just a little more believable. The cute girls doing whatever scenario is workable but this one just isn’t solid enough.

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Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Review Episodes 5 + 6

Posted on by Karandi
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Can a charming lead overcome annoying supporting characters?

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Episode 5

Aru takes the full focus in episode 5 of Hitoribocchi and I’m going to be honest, that was a detriment to my enjoyment. Aru’s unfortunate gag has already run paper thin and this episode just finished it off entirely cementing her as my least favourite character within this story and largely just boring me in the process.

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We start with her wearing a primary school backpack rather than carrying her middle-school bag. There’s more than a few questions raised by this. For instance, does she actually empty the entirety of her bag each night and then grab an empty bag to fill for school? That seems unlikely. Even more unlikely that she just has her whole primary backpack just lying around ready to be carried to school.

However, even if we toss logic off a cliff, the next steps in the gag are what utterly obliterate any goodwill I might have been willing to give it.

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In an effort to show perfection to the class, Aru keeps volunteering to read and answer questions and things inevitably go wrong. You would think that she’d change tactic and just keep her head down, but she insists on drawing attention to herself.  That was annoying enough, but the following day she apparently manages to dress entirely in a primary school uniform. And not notice until she’s half-way to school.

Forget suspension of disbelief, here you would need to actually paralyse your thought processes to accept that as the groundwork for a joke.

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Anyway, they tediously drag this out for a full twenty minutes with a tennis match thrown in for who knows what reason and then mercifully the episode ends. I just can’t find anything in this episode that was redeemable and on the back of the ninja episode Hitoribocchi is coming perilously close to getting dropped from my watch list.

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Episode 6

While certainly not as tedious as the previous episode, episode 6 of Hitoribocchi certainly isn’t making itself any more endearing by returning some of the focus to the inept class teacher who is still, for reasons utterly idiotic, afraid of Nako. So begins the set-up for the episode with Nako having failed a maths test and the teacher having to give her result back and the follow up concern that now she has to stay for extra lessons and can’t walk home with Bocchi.

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The moments this episode focused on Bocchi and her growing group of friends trying to tutor and support Nako were okay. Not great or laugh out loud funny, but there’s a cute dynamic in the group of odd-balls and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that those parts were better. There were also some cute moments early in the episode where Bocchi was willing herself to get sick in order to avoid presenting a poem.

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However, the moments that brought us back to the teacher were just kind of sad and to be honest I don’t get anything from her character other than a growing sense of annoyance.

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For me, Hitoribocchi is becoming something of a chore to watch so I’m uncertain at this point whether I’ll finish it or not. It isn’t a broken anime that would appeal to no one, but it certainly isn’t appealing to me at this point and the few elements I find cute or amusing are being overwhelmed by elements that I find just kind of stupid, dull or lazy.

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Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Review Episodes 3 + 4

Posted on by Karandi
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Everybody has their problems.

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Episode 3

Yeah, three episodes in and I’m already struggling with this one. Bocchi isn’t exactly a character I can rally behind. In week one her rampant insecurity worked well enough but in episode three it is just this side of obnoxious as she fears her friends will ditch her after one day absent. The lack of trust she places in the others in actually her single biggest hurdle in terms of actually being friends and I have to wonder why either of them are putting up with it to be honest. That string of texts she sends them is just this side of psychotic.

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Throw in the teacher who is just a complete failure of an educator who runs in fear from her own student, and one who has done nothing to warrant such a reaction, and all and all this episode delivers everything that could go wrong with the set up and little to off-set it that might be charming. I wouldn’t even waste the time screen-capping the teacher because she’s just such a useless character and one who adds nothing to what is fast becoming a fairly uninteresting viewing experience.

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In terms of what the episode does, we don’t really learn anything new about anyone or introduce a new character this week. Rather we have Bocchi trying to strengthen ties with her two existing friends by wanting to walk home with them, and that segues to her inviting them over which leads into her being sick and away from school. It is simple set up situation and milk it for laughs, but the laughs are fairly short in supply and I’m just not sure what to make of the section where she dresses in a bear costume.

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While this isn’t yet a deal breaker, at three episodes in I’d have to say this isn’t an anime I’m going to go out of my way to recommend. It just doesn’t have anything more than its premise and it is already becoming stale so early in the season. Stretching the episodes to full length was probably part of the issue and this one would probably remain more charming as a short.

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Episode 4

It’s hard to know, outside of the overly long run time of each episode, where Hitoribocchi goes wrong. Or rather, whether it is getting anything actually wrong or if the sum of its parts just can’t collectively be all that entertaining. Bocchi continues to be a problematic protagonist having melt downs just trying to cross the road because she can’t greet the crossing guard but she also continues to try to make friends. That basic premise isn’t overly wrong, but this is neither exaggerated enough to be over the top and amusing, nor dealt with seriously enough to be actually dramatic.

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The end result is something that feels like a slice of life with occasional punch lines, but mostly just lacks weight both in narrative and character development.

Of course, the exchange student who came to Japan to meet ninjas doesn’t help us take this anymore seriously. Part of me wonders if the real punch line here is that everyone in the class is actually completely dysfunctional individually. It seems weird that no one had noticed that this blonde girl was so ninja obsessed prior to this episode given she isn’t exactly going out of her way to hide it.

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The second half of this episode which consists of ‘ninja training’ falls pretty flat no matter how you want to look at it and I definitely found myself checking the clock to see how much more needed to be endured before the end.

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Part of me is curious about whether Bocchi will complete the task of befriending everyone, though at the rate she’s going that seems almost impossible. Otherwise though there is little to keep someone watching this series. If you are after school comedy there are better offers. If you are after slice of life or friendship stories there’s definitely better. Hitoribocchi just hasn’t put anything on the table yet that makes it something that needs to be watched.

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Karandi James