English Dub Review: Watari-kun’s XX Is About to Collapse “The Day Peace Began to Collapse”


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Naoto Watari balances going to high school life and looking after his ten year old sister, which is hard enough on its own, but made even harder when his estranged childhood friend Satsuki Tachibana reappears and barges her way back into his life.

OUR TAKE

New high school romcom anime to review for three months and…it is NOT off to a great start. Now, don’t get be wrong, I’m not at all against watching a pleasant slice of life about easygoing high schoolers with their mundane problems and excess hormones. Just like Isekai, it’s a well worn genre with a lot of cliches and tropes, and despite decades of stories with that setting, there’s still just as many ways to make it work as there are to make it crash and burn. And just going by this first episode, this show could go either way, but it already has a lot of troubling aspects that I worry about. The main one being Satsuki and her rather forceful relationship with Naoto, our viewpoint character. Also, I’m calling them their first names for now but I may change that based on whatever name gets said the most. Anyway, already there’s plenty of tension between these two right off the bat, apparently due to some previous wrongdoing by Satsuki in Naoto’s family garden years ago, where she did a lot of damage and then ran away without an explanation. Ever since, Naoto has held a grudge, but it seems she’s also kept her distance until just now, where she has reversed course and started going on the attack.

Already I can see this grudge turning out to be the result of a misunderstanding, with her just messing things up accidentally and being too embarrassed to explain, leaving things weird between them until the present day when they will likely reconcile and become proper friends again, and likely more given the nature of this sort of story. My problem comes from the fact that she is so forward with her advances that she’s even tackling him to the ground and kissing him until he literally passes out, even when he makes it EXTREMELY CLEAR that he wants her to leave him alone. No means no, lady! Just because it’s a girl moving on a guy doesn’t make it better! So, not a great first impression for a potential love interest here, not helped by the fact that his younger sister seems to get upset whenever he spends even the slightest bit of time with other girls EXCEPT for Satsuki, even in the context of student business (although the girl he does hang out with for that also seems to like him quite a bit, so it’s a shame she doesn’t have a chance!). So, I don’t like the main love interest, but the story is doing everything it can to put her front and center, and I’d be surprised if that changes or anyone calls out her weird behavior. But we’ve got about a dozen episodes or less to find out, otherwise this is not gonna be a fun time for me.

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