Keiki Kiryuu is a high school boy
who laments about the fact that he hasn’t had a girlfriend since birth. But, one day, he’s surprised and delighted to
find an anonymous love letter addressed to him.
Excited of the prospect of finally getting his very first girlfriend, he
sets out to investigate the identity of his secret admirer, whom he codenamed “Cinderella.” However, instead of a glass slipper, the clue
that his Cinderella has left behind is a pair of panties.
That synopsis alone should make
for an intriguingly bananas ecchi premise.
But it doesn’t end there. It actually
gets wackier. So, Keiki looks into his
suspects one at a time, and to his horror, he discovers that every single one
of them – whom he initially thought were sweet, wholesome girls – is harboring
a particular fetish.
That’s essentially what the
12-episode anime series Hensuki: Are You
Willing to Fall in Love with a Pervert, as Long as She's a Cutie? is all
about. And with such a wild premise at play here, my curiosity was piqued that I had to give it a shot at the start of the summer season of anime. I was betting for it to be a riotous
comedy.
Unfortunately, as it turned out,
it made me cringe more than laugh.
Now, cringe can actually generate
laughs. But the key is the
execution. If the execution falls flat,
what remains is just the cringe. Hensuki’s premise thrives on cringe. Sometimes, the cringe even gets to the point
of uncomfortable, borderline sick levels that it starts feeling like a horror
show pretending to be a comedy. So, if
it fails to produce quality comedy out of its cringy material even for just
half of the time, it means it is off-putting for about half of the time – which
is problematic. And I feel Hensuki does fail more than a few times.
I think it’s because Hensuki tries to play it straight and
sweet like it’s a typical anime rom-com for a significant amount of time. Now, if I have to be honest, it actually does
get heartwarming at times when it does – especially during the respective flashbacks
of how each of the potential Cinderellas was won over by Keiki, just by being
himself, as he’s apparently naturally kind, friendly, and gentlemanly. Moreover, when it drops an ecchi punchline out
of nowhere, disrupting the cozy, sentimental atmosphere, it can get fairly
side-splitting. The first episode does
this quite well.
On the other hand, it also messes
up the tone. It gets really rough – as
if it’s made up of two different shows clashing with each other. Plus, the delivery and nature of the ecchi punchlines
are not always strong and unpredictable to make up for the persisting unevenness
all the time. Thus, in my opinion, Hensuki would have been more effectively
hilarious if it committed to being completely trashy – similar to the route
that Why Are You Here, Sensei?! took –
for it would have had a more consistent tone.
I have to admit, though, that its
final joke is utterly brilliant. When
the identity of Cinderella is finally revealed, it of course turns out being
the cringiest solution possible – which is only fitting to what the show has
always been. But from this comes the
show’s hardest-hitting joke, which plays out in the final scene and line of
dialogue. As a final punchline, it only makes
so much sense. You slap yourself on the
forehead as you immediately realize that it has been actually foreshadowed all
throughout the series. And just like
with the revelation of who Cinderella is, that joke is also only fitting to
what the show has always been.
All in all, Hensuki: Are You Willing to Fall in Love with a Pervert, as Long as
She's a Cutie? is a mixed bag for me.
But I’ve had one of my most satisfying laughs of the year from it,
although it took until the very end to happen.
And it’s a laugh that’s only possible if one had actually seen the
entire cringe-filled series leading toward it.
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