'Hensuki' Is a Cringe Fest

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.