We've been spoiled on good slice-of-life and romantic comedy anime haven't we? As one of my favorite anime genres, I sometimes feel torn. I have been more forgiving of the tired and expected genre tropes, but I do genuinely love it when writers can take these familiar setups and turn them into something new or exciting. Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms is a series that does not do anything new and somehow actively makes me dislike a lot of the tropes I am so familiar with.

This is far from the worst anime I have seen in the Winter 2025 season, but it sins by being painfully boring and uninspired. The premise already puts the show in a position of constantly fighting an uphill battle. We have a main character who doesn't have a lot of redeeming qualities, with a premise built on a sense of vanity that arguably never goes away. The main gimmick is that she has been given so much attention for most of her life, and only finds herself near the titular character because he is trying hard to resist her natural charms. There is potential for a lot of comedy there, especially if the show leans into the fact that Medaka isn't interested in our narcissistic lead. The problem is the show is terrified to commit to any reality that could make the characters mean or unlikable. I don't hate any of the characters in the show aside from the lead, but I'm also not going to remember them because nobody has any noticeable standout features.

We have the stereotypical stalker, we have the underclassmen who also have a crush on Medaka, and we have the male classmates who, I swear, only exist just to chide Medaka over how lucky he is. I would almost feel bad for Medaka himself if he weren't so bland. The reason why he tries to keep his distance from Mona is because he's dedicated to his monk training, which I guess means he needs to constantly keep his mind purged of impure thoughts as a regular horny teenager. Again, there is a lot of comedic and even dramatic potential there, but the show doesn't go nearly as far with this idea. It's merely a thinly veiled compromise. We need Medaka to still react and like Mona's advances, but we also can't have them get too close, because otherwise the show would end very quickly. So instead, let's repeat the same jokes over and over again.

Mona tries to seduce Medaka, he tries to keep his distance while muttering to himself that he needs to keep his mind pure, the two wind up in a weirdly scandalous situation that for some reason reminds me of the early days of To Love-Ru, Medaka runs away, but somehow Mona comes out of the situation feeling a stronger sense of affection towards him. We have to stretch this bit for as long as possible, because it's not until the very end of the season that we get any genuine sense of character progression from Mona. When the only real character arc your female lead goes through is that she finally accepts the fact that she likes the one guy the show constantly throws her against, it's hard not to feel like I just wasted my time.

I respect the actors in both the sub and dub for trying their best to make the situations sound as funny or engaging as possible. It was especially nice listening to the dub make use of country accents, since a good amount of the cast have Osaka accents in the Japanese version, and they did their best to create that distinction. The best thing about Mona's character is that she tries to put on a more proper dialect in front of everybody in the city, but internally, she's a country girl, so all of her monologues and conversations with childhood friends are done with her country accent. I think Megan Shipman did a solid job with her performance, even if there were one or two inconsistent moments.

The soundtrack made use of very light melodies thanks to a lot of simple instruments. It's fine, but I swear there were places where it sounded like I was listening to café or elevator music. It was the definition of background noise that didn't add anything to the already bland setups and punchlines. Now and then, the directing will do something funny to punctuate the comedic timing, but the overall presentation is bland. Everything appears very white and washed out with the color palette leaning into pastels without any real sense of contrast. The whole show looks like it was produced in a big white void.

I won't say that I was disappointed watching Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms, but I was expecting a little bit more than what was given. The show was perfectly serviceable. If you've never watched a slice-of-life or romantic comedy anime before and want some background noise, you could do worse. I can easily recommend five other shows in the genre from the past two anime seasons that are miles better than this. Maybe I'm in the minority, because this series was popular enough to get a season two announcement, but the only thing I'm interested in at this point is how the plan to squeeze more story out of a premise and execution that overstays its welcome by the second episode.