English Dub Review: My First Girlfriend Is a Gal “My First Trip”

It may be their first trip to the beach but it’s the billionth anime beach episode.

By the time this review comes out the days of summer fun will be running the last of its course and fall will be making its cold return. That is sort of appropriate though given the quality I witnessed in today’s episode. It’s an odd duck this one. It takes all the components that have made previous episodes so groan-worthy and has seemingly found a way to make it work. Don’t panic I don’t mean the pedo parts of it. Clearly, the day that is deemed okay to make a positive light of comedy wise is the day comedy should die.

OVERVIEW (Spoilers Below)

As the last episode built up to, the girls and guys are now all at the beach with Junichi spending time with Yukana, Ranko, Nene and Yui getting to know each of them and making them all happy and Junichi’s friends sitting gawking at girls FAAAAAAAAAAAR away from them. I am so thankful for this turn of events as Junichi finally realizes the key to a girl’s heart. Actually, spending the time to get to know them. Quite a mind-blowing concept I know but for Junichi the human piece of pervert garbage from the last few episodes has finally had his writers figure out that maybe him acting so socially brain dead is making him come off disgustingly undesirable. So finally Junichi is allowed to act a bit more chivalrous for the girls as well as pervy so he can be that pervert with the heart of gold trope and not just perverted trash like his friends.

Although that lends itself to the clear problem that the girls’ personalities are shown to their fullest being all as paper thin as the skimpy swimsuits hiding their bodies. They are undoubtedly the best aspect of the anime. I can’t stress enough the girls are in fact the most interesting aspect of the anime but really, who are these girls? The tsundere who almost raped Junichi, the yandere who wants Junichi as a pet, the big titted little sister who wants her Oni-chan, and our gal Yukana, just who are these girls as characters outside of those tropes? I don’t see much character outside of these tropes and it feels that it’s only been until right now that these girls have been able to bounce their personalities off one another to form and clash and develop their personas. It feels too little too late at this point as we’ve spent most of the time getting to know the perverted minds of Junichi and his friends and growing a disdain for them all.

Yukana suffers the worst out of the girls as the main girl and love interest of the four she really has not demonstrated that much personality outside of being a mild tease. Yukana comes across less as a Gal and more just a nice person archetype, just like Touya from In Another World With My Smartphone. Now, of course, Yukana has demonstrated a much wider variety of emotion then Touya has but then again Yukana has been static thus far on how she reacts, keeping close to her giggling teasing, huffy annoyance, and innocent whimpers. Without anything in her background to support these reactions of hers Yukana feels like she is barely there as a character and Junichi would be better off choosing one of the other clearly defined girls from the remaining trio.

But let’s not forget who are the worst aspects of the show, Junichi’s butt munch friends. On our pedo alert narrative coverage, Pedo stares at little girls at the beach then goes to the communal bath to look at little children in the bath. Both utterly repugnant and if I wrote the show he would need to be pushed off a cliff onto a spiky pile of rocks to die a slow painful death. For the other two, whose names I am now feeling I should refuse to remember, are going to cartoonish extremes to peak on the girls when they are bathing nude. That is all. In actuality the cartoonish extremes they go to actually positively put Junichi in a better light while they become the stupid pervy trash.

OUR TAKE

I am stuck between wanting to give this show a break now that the trio of perverted garbage has been moved to the side and just my true thoughts on this episode. This is a much more enjoyable episode than most of what Gal had to offer, it had nice tender moments, Junichi got to actually interact with everyone and the sexy moments with them were actually fitting for a perverted comedy like this. But it is all hollow when the girls themselves are sadly too bland and haven’t been developed thanks to Junichi’s three friends especially our main gal who clearly is showing no character at all. I can’t recommend the series due to its bad quality but as an episode of the show, if you do enjoy it, it is much better than what I was expecting from a beach episode by My First Girlfriend Is a Gal.