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Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro (TV) (all seasons).


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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 10:41 am Reply with quote


Season 1: Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro (TV)
Season 2: Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack (TV 2) (discussion starts here)

Source: Manga (ongoing @ 15 Volumes, by Nanashi)

Demographic: Shounen

Animation Studio:
Season 1: Telecom Animation Film
Season 2: OLM Team Inoue

Genres: comedy, romance, slice of life

Themes: fan service, school, tsundere

Plot Summary: Mischievous Nagatoro always bugs her upperclassman and he can't figure out if it's just to get a reaction out of him, make his life miserable, or is secretly harboring feelings for him.

Air Date & Platform:
Season 1: April 4, 2021 (Sunday)
Available on: Crunchyroll

Season 2: January 7, 2023 (Saturday)
Available on: Crunchyroll

Episode Count / Runtime:
Season 1: 12 episodes
Season 2: 12 episodes

Total: 24 episodes
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bonbonsrus



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 1537
Location: Michigan, USA
PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 10:18 pm Reply with quote
I pretty much hate the premise of this show. Seriously can't stand Nagatoro. I don't understand the appeal myself of a romance between the guy and the girl who makes him feel like crap being an absolute bitch to him. It's the way she does it, seems much too mean spirited, not like teasing because you like someone. And the looks she gives are not looks teasing, but looks of I enjoy making other people feel small and making them cry.

Now, I will probably watch more having said that, but unless the tone changes, I can't see me really buying into a romance or liking her treatment of him. This is listed as comedy and romance, and it's neither for me so far. The animation looks nice. There, that was my positive about it.
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Kabuby 77



Joined: 11 Apr 2021
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:47 am Reply with quote
I think the level of harassment will be something between Karakai jozu no Takagi-san and Koe no katachi. I hope closer to the first than to the second. If you take it too seriously you won't have fun.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15576
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:02 am Reply with quote
The concept would be interesting if it comes with character growth, where maybe she might learn the parts that go to far, and he learned to stand up for himself a bit more. Although I don't think holding onto hope will be worth it. Or if the characters actually leaned into what the whole dynamic is meant to be, a humiliation fetish, of presumably male audience getting something from girl teasing male character.

Regardless of how healthy it might be, I am kind of interested after the first episode. My main complaints I would have of Takagi-san and Uzaki-chan is things did not progress much.
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Beltane70



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 3972
PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 8:12 am Reply with quote
Not going to lie, the first episode was a bit hard to watch. Nagatoro's teasing went way too far and bordered on being downright sadistic. I'm certainly hoping that she'll grow and learn to be a better person, but the main character also needs to stand up for himself. While Uzaki-chan could be a tad bit annoying, I never got the feeling that any of her teasing of Sakurai was mean-spirited, nor was Takagi's teasing of Nishikata.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 24155
PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:41 pm Reply with quote
I'm in the camp of not liking Nagatoro's character and really feeling like her teasing is grossly mean-spirited. A premise of a guy who has been bullied his whole life because he's socially awkward and likes drawing manga is guaranteed to set my teeth on edge. However, I will stick with it because I assume she becomes more human over time and might actually help him deal with other shitty people. We'll see.
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Panino Manino



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 752
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:28 am Reply with quote
Kabuby 77 wrote:
I think the level of harassment will be something between Karakai jozu no Takagi-san and Koe no katachi. I hope closer to the first than to the second. If you take it too seriously you won't have fun.

DuskyPredator wrote:
The concept would be interesting if it comes with character growth, where maybe she might learn the parts that go to far, and he learned to stand up for himself a bit more. Although I don't think holding onto hope will be worth it. Or if the characters actually leaned into what the whole dynamic is meant to be, a humiliation fetish, of presumably male audience getting something from girl teasing male character.


I had this discussion with another person, repeating my opinion here, I would have preferred to see someone animate "Yancha Gal no Anjou-san" rather than this.
Yes, isn't brilliant, but for what I know about the two series the relationship between the mains in Anjou-san is the opposite of this one here, which I feel the people who reads and likes this only makes excuses. It's an abusive relationship, and some people (uncomfortably too often people with "a japanese mindset") have the gall to blame the poor boy being bullied. He just wants to be left alone doing his thing but the girl sees him as someone easy to dominate. Yes, she may like him, but the way she likes and shows her affecting is just wrong, and to make it worse the boy will probably think that it's all his fault and deserved, right? He may still "grow up and man up" but I can bet that he will always remains submissive to her.
This is not "romantic" or cute.
Again, it's the opposite to the dynamic in Anjou-san where the girl only teases the boy lightly and actually cares about him and understands that he have some personal issues to overcome.
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Kilgamayan



Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 275
Location: Location, Location.
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:52 am Reply with quote
This one is a bit complicated. I imagine there are plenty of people that relate to Senpai, or at least empathize greatly with him. As someone that related to the male protag of Rent-a-Girlfriend when it was popular to dump on him, I respect the feelings of those who feel terrible for Senpai and loathe Nagatoro. What follows is in no way intended to diminish the validity of those feelings.

I see this as a romantic comedy where the source of the comedy is the wild differences in communication, and the romance is in the efforts and personal growth needed to overcome those differences in communication to become proper friends, if not outright dating partners and beyond. Since the audience has access to Senpai's thoughts and memories, I won't bother going into him here; Nagatoro is the one that needs some scrutinizing. Based on how she and, perhaps more importantly despite how quickly they vanished into the abyss of immediate irrelevancy, Nagatoro's friends have behaved so far, I believe that Nagatoro is behaving the way she is around Senpai because she truly believes this is how you behave around people you like and want to be friends with. Everything she's done with him is likely largely nothing new compared to what she and her friends do with each other every single day.

What strongly suggests that Nagatoro is being genuine is the degree to which she's made herself vulnerable around this guy she just met. Even after everything she said about his manga (which I suspect she fell in love with the instant she saw it), she was willing to act out the female knight role for him to give him the chance to act out the male protector role. One could argue that she was only doing that to be a shit and embarrass him, but I don't see the bully-centric benefit to both figuratively and literally make a scene in a library of all places. There's too much risk of getting in trouble yourself, and the only way your taunting has a chance to be successful is if anyone else in the library has the necessary context to understand what the heck you're doing (and even then it depends on anyone that does have that context siding with you over him).

Then there's the art room the next day, where Nagatoro is prancing around and acting like a shit again - but she also is willing to (a) show this guy a bit of her body (specifically her bra and some cleavage), and (b) actually sit there and be his sketch model (hell, she even brought the idea up unprompted). Those sketches take a while! And even though the segment cut from the very beginning to the very end, everything we saw suggests she sat still (aside from grinning her silly grin on and off) the entire time for him. That's time she could have spent with her friends, or at home on social media, or in the arcade, or in a movie theater, or...literally anywhere else. If this is strictly bullying-motived then she's playing some kind of mind-blowingly-long game.

With all of this in mind, I believe her asking him out at the end was a genuine question that she wanted to hear "yes" for - one of the biggest ways one can make themselves vulnerable - and her behavior after he declined was the only way she knew to cover up her embarrassment and sadness, not her actively and maliciously trying to dump on him and any chances he might have at a love life.

I am enthused to see where this goes, because I already want to see them grow as people, develop better communication skills, and become friends, if not get into a relationship, by the time the series is over. There are already signs we are headed there - by the time the episode ended, he had successfully told her off for being a jerk at least once, and even directly asked her for her name, despite spending the entire episode unable to look her in the eye (beyond whatever was necessary for the sketch), while she has been presented with at least one major devastating consequence of her actions and has the chance to reflect on them and perhaps change how she approaches him as a result. (I also hope he dwells on her reaction to his refusal to draw her thighs and realizes that, if it really were inappropriate for him to look there, she would not have offered to model for him in the first place, but I suspect they likely won't ever come back to that.)

...Or it really could genuinely just be her constantly dumping on him for no reason and they're the same people at the end of episode 12/13/whatever that they were at the beginning of Episode 1. That would make for an incredibly unappealing show, though, and I really don't hope they go that way.

EDIT: To be clear, I will state again that none of the above is intended to trivialize or invalidate any of Senpai's pain, because his pain is valid regardless of where Nagatoro is coming from. I would simply disagree that Senpai having this pain automatically means Nagatoro is inherently a bad person; I believe she is also a good person that simply sucks at communicating in a way that is good for Senpai, because her social bubble sucks at communicating in a way that is good for Senpai and she doesn't know how else to behave (and, with all due respect to people on this website under the age of 19, high schoolers are generally kinda inept when it comes to this sort of thing). I hope that her crush turning her down for a date will cause her to reflect and rethink things, because her changing how she behaves around Senpai to be more in line with what he needs will be good for both of them.
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Panino Manino



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 752
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:46 pm Reply with quote
@Kilgamayan
I can believe in you, but I can't believe in japanese mangaká.
I'll have to wait for the series to prove we are all wrong.
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Kilgamayan



Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 275
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:53 pm Reply with quote
Oh, no worries, I totally get it. Hell, even if my initial impressions of Nagatoro's motivations and feelings are correct, it is entirely possible the original writer got a short way into the series and went "...you know what would be funnier? if she just spent all her time being a shit" and adjusted things accordingly.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 24155
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:22 pm Reply with quote
@ Kilgamayan - just wanted to thank you for the very cool way you expressed your opinion without doing it such that people who feel differently might have gotten their backs up. That kind of thoughtful posting is the recipe for intelligent conversation as opposed to snide-fests (or worse).
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Animeking1108



Joined: 26 Apr 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:16 pm Reply with quote
Did the writer actually look at the scene where Nagatoro makes Senpai cry and think to himself "Yeah, people are going to love this character"? The first episode was just hard to watch. Pure torture porn. People who read the manga keep insisting that it gets better, but if your first impression is to make me angry and uncomfortable, then I ask "Why can't it be good now?" It's like watching Final Fantasy VII Machinabridged again.

Unfortunately, from what I've read about what happens later, that doesn't really make her more likable. The whole "I abused you because I care" Trope was exactly why I loathed Your Lie In April.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15576
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:28 am Reply with quote
Animeking1108 wrote:
The whole "I abused you because I care" Trope was exactly why I loathed Your Lie In April.


Oh yes, I have stuck pretty strongly to a dislike of that show in how it seemed to romanticise abuse. I still thought that YLIA had more sinister elements as it had the whole thing dressed up in a way that it is just romcom stuff that will never admit the awful things done to the main character. This show I think is at least making the heroine look a little twisted and acknowledging that it is hurting him.

Seems more clear here that it a masochistic fetish.
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Panino Manino



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 752
PostPosted: Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:27 pm Reply with quote
@Kilgamayan
I'm not watching any bad anime this season, and as this one is a simple premise unlike that rotten egg from last season, why not? I watched the two episodes and may I say that it was surprising? 

The author did a good job in convincing that he planted the seeds for a future relationship to blossom. To make it clear, he did this by showing that not only Nagatoro is wrong, but ALSO Senpai is "wrong". There are particularities about him that I didn't see being mentioned that are also "bad" and unhealthy, and this makes this anime interesting IMO.
Nagatoro didn't just bullied him, she went further and "broke" him. While the other bullies had zero interest on him Nagatoro dived deep in a way that others don't do making he unable to ignore her and feel pain. So she isn't casually looking at him, she is looking with a bit more attention than others, and after seeing how Nagatoro normally threats people she dislikes the Senpai felt special, and that is as bad as her bullying, the particularity about him that I mentioned. So, you see, even if Nagatoro may love him doesn't matter because the way she express her love is wrong, the way the Senpai receives this love and feels loved/validated is just as wrong.

This is an recipe for disaster, for a history about a abusive, traumatic relationship with no survivors.
If this belonged to another demographic would be very different, but as a juvenile story it's unlikely that this will take a dark route and these two characters will realize what they're doing wrong and need to change about themselves. 
The question to ask and the expectation to have for me is not if Nagatoro will improve and will stop hurting him as much as she likes being a sadist, but if the Senpai will change enough to not need being "loved" in this say, that accepting this type of attention is bad for him. Remember A Silent Voice and how Shouko felt that it was her fault? Same thing. (and is worthy the reminder that Koe no Katachi was an even harder redemption story to sell).
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15576
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 5:29 am Reply with quote
I kind of liked the second episode more. You had some of Nagatoro being embarrassed, she even came to some understanding of some of his interests, and I would say was a bit more than bullying, even if the way she is acting is not what you would call entirely healthy. He is at least talking to her, there is some room there that he can become more likely to talk rather than turtle up. It also seems pretty clear that she has interest in him, which is what he should have gained from seeing how she reacted to the other guys who were more superficial over their interest or more forwardly perverted.

If there were some apologies from her from realising that teasing is not the best way to treat someone you have an interest in, it would be a bit more golden.
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