Aimi and Nami are friends. No, wait—Aimi describes them as “rivals.” After all, the two are constantly talking about Kirio, the boy they both have a crush on. And the duo spends their days not only talking about him, but doing the deepest of deep dives, like fighting over who gets to bring him the jacket he left behind in class, taking turns pretending to be him as they practice asking Kirio out, and discussing whether or not they’d like to hear him fart. Yep, that’s the kind of discussions they have. But all of it might bring them one step closer to their unrequited love—and much closer in friendship with one another.
I’ve got to give it to this series: It’s unique and goes for broke. There’s really a whole lot to like here, starting with Aimi, who might just be girl of the season—not because throngs of boys will fall head over heels for her (though they might), but because she’s so unabashedly weird. From pulling Aimi back from grabbing Kirio’s jacket because “we might get our spit on the artwork” to loudly proclaiming that it would be a blessing to hear an extremely large fart from Kirio-kun, she is nonstop weirdness. And it really leads to a lot of humor as Nami basically plays the role of straight man. I laughed out loud a number of times, mostly because of Aimi’s dialogue, but from other weird things too, like the boy who is sweet one moment and then tries to French kiss his new girlfriend a second after, or the old lady calling out to Mamo-chan, her monkey who’s eating a castella on the sidewalk (whoever voices that old lady always cracks me up when she randomly pops up in an anime). But I still won’t be tuning in—despite the laughs—because I found the episode to overall be quite boring. It’s hard to figure because I did think it humorous, but I suspect it’s in the production. The animation is staid—there’s so little movement, as if the company was trying to save money by using as much still (or near-still) animation as possible. And though the OP is pretty great with its memorable song and mix of manga and animation (the ED does similar to a lesser effect, though I found Ako’s voice to be entrancing), the music within the show sounds old-fashioned, unnecessarily wistful, and sometimes discordant when it should be more upbeat. A real shame, because this is a funny series; you might enjoy it regardless, but since I found myself drifting off already, I’ll cut my losses now.
Kirio Fan Club can be streamed on HIDIVE.
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