'Why Are You Here, Sensei?!' May Be Trash, but It Still Earns Laughs

I don’t know what got into me, but I was in the mood for some ecchi laughs to add to my anime watchlist for the spring 2019 season.  So I ended up watching Why Are You Here, Sensei?! – also known in the more aggressive title of Why the Hell are You Here, Teacher?!

The shortform series starts off with 18-year-old Ichiro Sato, a senior in Kawanuma West High School, continuously finding himself in hilariously unintentional erotic situations with the 23-year-old Japanese language teacher Kana Kojima, whom every student – including Ichiro – fears for her terrorizing personality.  But this series of awkward, improper encounters between them becomes the key for the two to develop feelings for each other.

I thought at first that the entire series was going to be all about them.  But, as it turned out, the anime also features three of Ichiro’s classmates respectively having the same experience with three other young teachers.  These four arcs are evenly distributed across its 12 episodes.

Bluntly speaking, Why Are You Here, Sensei?! is trash. But I would be lying if I say it didn’t make me laugh a couple of times.  There’s truly weird hilarity to be had from how ridiculously implausible its setups for naughty “dumpster fire” situations are, as well as from its utter brazenness to push the envelope for an ecchi.  It’s also heavily censored, and yet the cringe from its bawdy scenes easily seeps through, inducing uncomfortable chuckles from the viewer.

In the end, was Why Are You Here, Sensei?! an anime I could have done without?  Absolutely.  Do I wish I did?  Not necessarily.