My Deer Friend Nokotan

Episode 4

I'm not sure if you guys have noticed, but this My Deer Friend Nokotan show is a little…odd. Oh sure, on the surface it appears to be a regular little comedy about Koshi and Shikanoko's daily lives at school and in their club. But look carefully, and you'll detect some strange, subversive elements lurking just below. For instance, check this out:

Nokotan is eating deer crackers. But she bites right into the paper wrapper. That doesn't make any sense, girls can't eat paper!

Even the release of this show is just off, somehow. Did you know it has a simuldub? It feels a bit rushed in places (they don't even dub Nokotan's song in this week's episode!), but it exists! Except it's not on Crunchyroll where the original simulcast was promoted—it's on Amazon! What are they trying to hide by putting this version over on the Epic Games Store of anime? Surely the production committee's efforts to promote the fine prefecture of Nara don't believe that most English-speaking Americans will discover this low-key little school comedy on the same site they use to bulk-order Emeril's Essence seasoning blend?

No, I put it to you that they are dodgily trying to obscure the truths that lurk so tantalizingly beneath Nokotan's innocent exterior. This cartoon's secret messages subliminally corrupt the youth like many disrespectful Olympic opening ceremonies. It's all plain when you analyze the character of Nokotan herself. Sure, she seems like an utterly normal anime girl with no weird comedic quirks whatsoever. But in this episode, she gifts student council member Tsubame with "grass" and remarks on how she knows her stuff. It's later revealed that she's secretly growing mushrooms in the gym shed.

That's right. Shikanoko is actually a drug dealer.

I, for one, will not stand for this series promoting this criminal agenda. It's bad for everyone. You know how hard Japan's anti-drug laws are. Imagine if the fine actors and animators putting this show together, unaware of the filth the writers are so slyly slipping into the script, got caught up in prosecution over this paraphernalia? For the sake of everyone involved, to say nothing of the good of culture, My Deer Friend Nokotan must cease all promotion of narcotics and return to being an entirely normal anime with no askew elements whatsoever.

So long as this show continues to shotgun-blast introduce new characters in every episode, it'd be nice for them to be entertaining additions. The student council members come off as more fun than the likes of Anko and Bashame, whom the show already seems to be running out of things to do with. The funniest thing those two have done was their little animation of getting thrown out of the club room, which this episode used a couple of times. But I digress. The quirks of the student council are simple enough but Neko's little stool is indeed pretty cute and watching Koshi be completely unable to get a read on Tsubameya is a funny enough bit. Granted, Tsubameya's other bit of effectively ignoring Koshi to fawn over Nokotan is basically a repeat of Bashame's own bit but maybe that's just going to be a thing with this show overall. Everybody loves Nokotan. Except for Nokotan. And Anko. They love Koshi.

My Deer Friend Nokotan was a bit more solidly chortle-worthy in this episode than it was last week. It's also funny in an overarching way that so little of the material and humor came from Nokotan herself. Koshi really is carrying a lot of the comedy in this series, being one of the more effectively outsized straight men I've seen in a show like this in a while. I don't know why Nekoyamada thinks she has to work so hard to oust Koshi; given enough time and deer-derived stressors, Koshitan will almost certainly defeat herself.

Rating: Thunderhoof, the evil Decepticon deer Transformer voiced by Frank Stallone

My Deer Friend Nokotan is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris doesn't want to burn any decent deer puns in the footer here, lest he need to use them in the reviews over the coming weeks. If you're really craving any extra aside goofiness, why not check out his Twitter or his blog? I think I saw some jokes on there the other day.