English Dub Review: The Helpful Fox Senko-San “Don’t Be Shy, Now!”

The minutia of heteronormativity is starting to worry the neighbors.

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Nanako wakes up after his first night with Senko, and she’s nowhere to be found. Nanako thinks that the whole thing was just a dream until he sees Senko making breakfast for him. He’s got no time for a meal, though, as he is late for work. Senko notices that his black aura of stress has returned, and resolves to do something about it. Nanako leaves for work, catching some notice from his neighbor, and Sanko brainstorms exactly how she’s going to pamper the millennial computer programmer upon his return to his apartment that evening.

At work, Nanako’s day is not going well. He contends with another workday of mindless drudgery, only broken up by being yelled at by his boss. Nanako even stays so late that the last train to his stop has discontinued service for the evening, forcing him to walk home. When he gets home, he finds Senko waiting for him with another hearty meal. She convinces Nanako that he needs his rest, and possibly an ear cleaning. While he declines the latter, Nanako does now have a strong desire to touch Senko’s ears. She reluctantly allows this, but it has a similar effect to him petting her tail.

Afterward, the two resolve to go to bed. Nanako looks away, respectfully, as Senko changes into a pair of pajamas and the two drift off to sleep. Nanako wakes up in the middle of the night, upset that he made Senko sleep on the guest futon and asks to switch sleeping arrangements with her. Senko misinterprets his gesture as either a plea for comfort or a sexual advance. The remedy is the same either way, however. She gets into bed with Nanako and the two try to fall asleep together. Nanako has trouble with this until he falls into Senko’s fur, where he falls asleep nearly instantly.

While he dreams, he seems to recall an ancestral memory about one of his long dead relatives. It seems that he too had a relationship with Senko, but it was less one-sided than the one she has with Nanako. The pair helped each other out, even if Senko pretended that annoyed her. Nanako wakes up from his slumber very refreshed and gets ready for work in a much happier manner than the day before. He even slows down to have breakfast with Senko. As he heads off for work, Senko wishes him a heartfelt farewell, once again arousing his neighbor’s suspicion.

Our Take

While watching this episode, I was thinking a lot about invisible labor. For those who don’t know, invisible labor is work that is done and generally not thought about. This is like when you go to a public place and the bathroom is clean. You don’t necessarily have to think about who did that, but someone had to do it. More often than not, invisible labor is done by women, people of color, or those who fall into both of those categories, and the labor is often undervalued. This term was especially on my mind during the portion of this week’s episode where Senko was alone in Nanako’s apartment. It seems as if the show has decided to show the audience just what invisible labor looks like, but it feels like the show fails to go anywhere further than that with the framing of the work itself.

Now, I understand what the show is trying to do. Quite obviously, Senko-san is going to do less and less of the housework as Nanako becomes more and more able to take care of himself, and—eventually—his self-sufficiency and increased mental health will be noticed by his comely next-door neighbor and Senko-san’s job will inevitably come to an end. This much is clear, so far. What isn’t is why I should root for Nanako in the first place.

Nanako seems to have no goals of his own or any interests whatsoever. Senko talks about the man he was before he became depressed, but—as of yet—he has no motivation for doing anything. Does Nanako even like programming? The truth is that none of this really matters in the long run. We’ll get whatever answers will serve the story and the rest will be left to our imaginations. In fact, making Nanako have too specific a job or hobbies risks alienating the audience who is certainly placing themselves firmly in his shoes. It isn’t that audience-insert fantasies are inherently bad or that a slow release of information isn’t something that I appreciate, but having both is a challenge I’m not sure The Helpful Fox Senko-san is up to.

Senko-san is a fantasy, as is much of entertainment. But this fantasy is both incredibly boring and potentially very harmful. Teaching that a woman’s place is to serve a much older (or at least older looking man) in the way he desires is not the best lesson for children, and even if Nanako gets better as the series goes on, he (and by extension, the audience) is told that his complacency and negativity is not only okay but will be rewarded by a girl he finds attractive if he just wait long enough.

All of this pales in comparison to the loli. They really don’t let up with this stuff, do they? In addition to the awkward changing moment and the fact that the two slept in bed together, Nanako’s inner monologue basically only activates to reiterate how young Senko-san looks. And her dialogue, by extension, feels like responses to these discomforts by declaring her advanced age. Their relationship is inappropriate by pretty much all standards and the show feels the need to continue pointing that out. Is that part of the fetish?

Thus, after a pair of episodes with no other characters worth concerning ourselves with, we do have an age-appropriate love interest for Nanako, and the sooner he can pivot away from the 800-year-old preteen the better off we’ll all be.