Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun discussion thread

[something]

となりの怪物くん

Serious studious girl meets delinquent boy. Based on a shoujo manga.

Airs Tuesday, Oct 2 at 1:35 JST on TV Tokyo

Animation studio: Brains Base

ANN Entry
Official Site


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[FUNiOP]

I'm not generally a big fan of shoujo, but I really liked this first episode. I never really realized how much of a signature style this studio had until I saw the first piece of promo art and thought of Natsume, Baccano!, and Durarara!! immediately. Overall, they do a very nice job with the visuals, as usual. There's not much that requires spectacular animation, and there are some shoujo visual gag tropes that oversimplify the visuals that I don't exactly care for, but they never really bothered me, either. Looks like this will be the first series of the season that I'll be following.

[ookamigirl]

Shizuku & the forever absent Yoshida.
Haru looks like the most interesting character of the all.
That guy seems to have a lot of mischanneled energy.
The dry ice girl meets volcano hot guy. They'd make a good couple.
Haru is really weak & naive when someone mentions the word Tomodachi.
Weird guy + weird girl = even weirder relationship.
Their love <-> hate relationship is just awesome!!!
The Haru character really looks like Oreki from Hyouka though..

[HitokiriShadow]

Well, that was a mostly cute and fun episode. I love Shizuku and Haru is (mostly) a not-bad, amusing love interest.

But then there's that rape threat and I'm just not sure how I feel about it. There are ways you can maybe try to justify it's presence with his general character and the social differences between violence of men vs. men (physical) and men vs. women (sexual) but I dunno. It's one and done with no further commentary. At least he didn't actually DO anything (sexual, rape-y) beyond that. There was no actual attempted rape, no molestation or further sexual abuse to push the point.

Oh, and there was also that unwelcome kiss at the end, though that's significantly less of an issue and much easier to defend with Haru's general behavior and that it wasn't exactly condoned.

Anyway, hopefully future episodes won't have these issues and I'll just be able to straight up enjoy the show, which has a lot going for it otherwise.

[nakimushi]

I really liked Shizuku a lot. Tomatsu Haruka's deadpan delivery was spot on.

This looks like it should be a lot of fun.

[strangefour]

-My Little Monster~ My Little Monster~ *hums* Will friendship be magical here?
-Haru is a violent bipolar insane idiot.
-And he's a rapist... WAIT WHAT!? Teh hell?
-Who thinks he's Solid Snake...
-Holy crap are his mood swings abrupt and powerful. His brain chemistry is all messed up. Either he's on drugs or in serious need of some.
-Dude wtf! Dumping juice on her for being honest. Not cool dude. Not only are his own emotions out of whack he can't read other people's emotions.
-Oh crap. Now he "loves" her. You really got yourself into a horrible stalker relationship now Shizuku.
-What... What? ... WHAT!? Nude huh why pants but THE FUCK!? Someone please lock this mental patient up. He's going to rape Shizuku any minute.
-Oh of course he's an idiot savant. He's a violent autistic. Why wouldn't he be a genius. *headdesk*
-Violence against women... hooray? *sigh*
-Damn right Shizuku! Now we shall never see this psychopath again.
-Oh son of a bitch! Why would you go see him to gloat or whatever? Haru is mental!
-A KISS!? Oh Shizuku I'm so sorry. He's going to be your first boyfriend and he will end up beating you. If no physically he has shown that he will batter you emotionally.

Shojo is fucked up.

[nakimushi]

Originally Posted by HitokiriShadow

But then there's that rape threat and I'm just not sure how I feel about it. There are ways you can maybe try to justify it's presence with his general character and the social differences between violence of men vs. men (physical) and men vs. women (sexual) but I dunno. It's one and done with no further commentary. At least he didn't actually DO anything (sexual, rape-y) beyond that. There was no actual attempted rape, no molestation or further sexual abuse to push the point.

Yeah, that was definitely off-putting, so much so that I initially thought it might have been mistranslated.

However, considering the way he acted immediately after letting her go, I pretty much chalked it up, to the fact that almost every thing he said to other people in the first half was an extreme threat: he seemed to have no other way of dealing with people.

As you said, he never did anything, but so far it does look like that with Haru and the blonde kid, Shizuku will get caught up between two "bad boy" love interests. So I wouldn't be surprised if there were more scenes with forceful grabbing of her arms, but I doubt it will go farther than that. Although she did take an inadvertent shot to the face.

[stardf29]

Well, that was an amusing combination of snarky female lead, male lead who's a bit off in the head, and lots of comedic moments between them. Moved pretty fast, too.

Count me interested. Still not sure if I'll be following this or Kamisama, but if the latter doesn't get a stream, I'll be following this one for sure.

[bear]

Immature genius boy with no social skills or impulse control meets bookworm girl. One minute I'm about ready to drop this and the next I'm going OMG this is going to be good. He's a borderline sociopath and I'm not sure which side of the border he's on. He could very easily rape her thinking it's to show his love on the other hand he is so desperate for human companionship it's painful to watch. If it doesn't drift too close to the dark side it could be very good.

Once she knew he was a genius the obvious think was for her to get him to tutor her. "Why should I?" "It's what friends do." "Oh, ok." That would allow her to study and keep him occupied at the same time.

Actually, that might be a way to break the ice with the rest of the class. It worked in Kimi ni Todoke.

[bear]

Originally Posted by HitokiriShadow

But then there's that rape threat and I'm just not sure how I feel about it. There are ways you can maybe try to justify it's presence with his general character and the social differences between violence of men vs. men (physical) and men vs. women (sexual) but I dunno. It's one and done with no further commentary. At least he didn't actually DO anything (sexual, rape-y) beyond that. There was no actual attempted rape, no molestation or further sexual abuse to push the point.

Based on the rest of his actions, I don't think he would have. He just thought that that threat was a way of getting her to do what he wanted. No thought as to consequences. However, if, at some point, he actually thinks that girls want to be raped, but will protest....

Oh, and there was also that unwelcome kiss at the end, though that's significantly less of an issue and much easier to defend with Haru's general behavior and that it wasn't exactly condoned.

Remember, the idiot teacher gave him that book. He's going to assume that's reality and expect things to happen that way if he does them. He thought if he kissed her his heart would start pounding and he was surprised when it didn't. He said he still loves her, but, then again, he doesn't have a clue as to what something like that means.