English Dub Season Review: My Clueless First Friend Season One

Overview:

Akane Nishimura is a lonely elementary school girl. All of her classmates call her “Grim Reaper” because of her appearance. Taiyou Takada is a transfer student who is intrigued by this nickname. Despite the negative rumors, he wants to be Nishimura’s friend.

Our Take:

Taiyou Takada is the new kid in school and he immediately hears everyone else talking about a grim reaper. He meets this so-called reaper, Akane Nishimura, and immediately wants to befriend her. He thinks all the talk about curses and supernatural powers is cool, so he wants to be friends with the person behind it all. Takada doesn’t realize that the other students are teasing Nishimura and they start to tease him too. Nishimura thinks it’s best if Takada avoids her so he doesn’t have to deal with that. Takada doesn’t care though, since he still wants to be friends. Besides, he has the amazing power to twist everybody’s insults into compliments and leave them distraught. It’s actually quite impressive.

Takada becomes Nishimura’s first friend and they have a lot of fun together. They also grow really close, which is so sweet to watch. Takada is always complimenting Nishimura and she’s always blushing. She never gets used to the compliments, but it never loses its charm either. There are endless amounts of wholesome scenes between the two, as well as some that take a little bit of an unexpected turn. Overall, these two have a great dynamic. Takada’s insane level of positivity is a good influence on Nishimura and always manages to cheer her up.

Nishimura manages to make some other friends as well. Daichi Hino is Takada’s friend who is obsessed with tank tops. He’s pretty absent-minded, but he’s kind. He’s one of the few students in Nishimura’s class who never teased her. Umi Adachi also falls into this category. She starts off asking Nishimura for help on getting Hino a present. She ends up being integrated into the friend group afterwards. Taiyou’s sister, Yukiko, immediately takes a liking to Nishimura. She finds her adorable and she’s always giving her clothes, as well as reminding her how great Taiyou thinks she is. Even one of Nishimura’s classmates who constantly teases her ends up becoming friends with her by the end. I would have liked for more of them to have followed suit, but a win is still a win.

There are a lot of likable characters in this show. So many, in fact, that they balance out the ones who are always picking on Nishimura. Takada doesn’t even need to say rude comments to put them in their place. His overwhelming positivity and cluelessness is enough to get the others to be quiet.

I like this show’s art style quite a bit. The character designs are interesting and they stand out. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the shading choices at first, but I grew to like them. All of the characters have a distinctive white shine on their heads, which reminds me of a painting. It’s an artistic choice that I enjoy and I think it makes the show looks unique.

The English dub is a lot of fun. I especially love Takada’s dialogue. He says a lot of weird things and he has some interesting exclamations. However, I feel like these are all things an actual child might say. He doesn’t feel like he’s coming off as more mature than he is. The rest of the voice cast is also pretty good. I will say that some of the boys in the class have rather deep voices for elementary school kids. That’s something that’s fairly common in animation though, so it doesn’t really bother me.

As a whole, this is such a fun and wholesome anime. It’s hard to watch a single episode and not smile for just about the whole thing. There are plenty of enjoyable characters and plenty of great scenes. Plus, it always feels great to watch a lonely closed-off character make friends and start to become happy. My Clueless First Friend is a nice feel-good show and it’s a welcome inclusion into the anime library.