English Dub Season Review: How Clumsy Are You, Miss Ueno? Season One

How Clumsy Are You, Miss Ueno? has to be the dumbest anime I’ve seen this year.

And that’s a part of its charm.

It’s not “dumb” in the conventional sense in that it’s a lackluster anime. It’s just that virtually everything about this anime is so chaotic and excessive that it kind of makes you wonder why it even exists. It’s nowhere near as absurdist as a show like Pop Team Epic yet it doesn’t really adhere to a traditional narrative. Okay, sure, there’s the plot that seems to follow the conventional “girl falls for boy” story, but even then it’s blown to such proportions that it makes you wonder whether the writers (or the original author of the manga) were deliberately creating a parody in making this anime.

The narrative follows a high school girl named Ueno and the hilarity she and her science club get into due to Ueno’s desire to be noticed by fellow club member Tanaka. Unfortunately, like most male characters in this sort of situation, Tanaka is a hopeless idiot so, of course, he has no idea that Ueno is crushing on him. Even despite the fact that Ueno uses her oddly specific inventions just to solely get his attention. Oh, yeah. That’s another quirk with our protagonist: she’s a genius inventor. And some her inventions even defy the laws of known physics. NASA would be drooling for Ueno’s ingenuity, but what does she use it for? To get that numbskull Tanaka’s attention. And because Tanaka is literally as dumb as a bowl of instant noodles, he doesn’t pick up on the obvious intentions of Ueno’s inventions. By Ueno’s side is Yamashita, a stoic bookworm who silently helps Ueno in her schemes.

The entirety of the series can basically be boiled to this: What if Chuck Jones and -insert Japanese animation company name here- teamed up to make an anime? The result would be How Clumsy Are You, Miss Ueno? The whole schtick of the anime is fairly easy to figure out: Ueno makes some ungodly invention in order to get Tanaka’s attention, only for the whole thing to backfire on her disastrously because either Tanaka is too dense to catch onto Ueno’s obvious moves or due to Ueno’s own inability to openly display her affection whenever things are going her way. Wash, rinse, repeat. Because of this, your expectations are established early on. And thankfully, the anime doesn’t really deviate from this scheme. It’s like watching Wile. E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner. You know how the episode is going to end, you just want to see what sort of crackpot plan Ueno hatches up in her quest for Tanaka’s affections.

In any other context, I feel like Ueno would be an unlikable character. She’s loud, opinionated, and extremely animated, the type of protagonist that lends itself to a comedy anime. By contrast, Tanaka is the only sane man while Yamashita is somewhere in the middle (though usually acts as Ueno’s rational foil). Sure, they could’ve gone the same route as D-Frag! and made the level-headed male character the protagonist, but to see an eccentric madwoman like Ueno, in a comedy anime no less, is intriguing to me. I also feel like Ueno’s voice (done excellently by Hilary Haag) would be extremely grating in any other context, even if she wasn’t the protagonist. Writing this now, I just realized her English voice bears striking resemblance to Jenny Slate’s. (Who is best known for playing Mona Lisa in Parks and Recreation and Pony Head in SVTFOE.)

And yeah, sure Tanaka is a boring idiot, but that adds to his charm. At least in later episodes. In the beginning, you’re just sort of left wondering why Ueno has feelings for this vanilla wafer. Yamashita is the wry observer of the trio, who coaches Ueno whenever she’s hesitant about going through with her plans and trolls her two clubmates whenever the situation calls for it. Also, major props to Monica Rial for Yamashita’s voice. She sounds like such the quintessential know-it-all nerd. I love it.

As for the comedy, I will admit it’s hit or miss. I personally enjoyed it in spite of the show’s occasional reliance on bodily humor. Slapstick is also heavily prevalent in this show, and it honestly leads to some of the funniest moments in the season. The true strength of this series lies in how it handles its comedic situations. The situations the characters find themselves in are almost like red herrings. You’d expect the joke to lie in the sheer wackiness of the scenarios the characters find themselves in. Except the true humor comes out of how derailed some of the characters’ conversations get when dealing with the aforementioned situations. It’s this sort of insane comedy that seems to fit a show of this caliber.

It’s also subtle, but there is more heart in the show than meets the eye. I’m not saying that the characters are sociopaths like in Kakegurui, but Ueno herself comes off as extremely brash and self-centered. If you just watch the OP and the (various) endings, it becomes apparent that there’s more to Ueno than just being a hapless mad genius.

In sum, How Clumsy Are You, Miss Ueno? is a good, albeit quick summer binge. The character designs are adorable (almost chibi-like), their reactions are hilarious,  and there’s strength in its simple narrative. It’s just a delightful, quirky anime.

That said, 10/10 would not recommend watching in the midst of an acid trip.