I did a ‘review’ on a series titled, I Shaved. Then I Brought a High School Girl Home and did so because of the source getting an anime in Spring 2021. Now overall the launch of the first episode fell under my radar. Between cleaning up the winter series and prepping for the Spring the manga left little impression on me and I actually forgot about the series altogether. Then Reddit memes start to happen. Officially, up until last night, I hadn’t started any spring anime, still going through the process of which ones I was going to watch weekly and which I was going to wait on. But as these things go, I ended up watching the first episode of I Shaved and in a rare one-episode review, this is what I thought about it.
So the basic premise of this series is, well, as the title says. It follows office worker and recently rejected Yoshida. Whom walking plastered on his way home runs into a young girl sleeping near a street lamp. In some interesting drunk POV animation, he approaches the girl, asking her why the hell she is where she is. Getting a prompt answer she simply states she has nowhere else to go and offers to sleep with him in exchange for letting her stay with him. An offer he quickly and harshly turns down. This sets early on the typical ecchi narrative one may find in anime romcoms. But much to my surprise, it is a narrative this series immediately tries to stamp out. Full of drunken empathy Yoshida asks for her name Ogiwara, Sayu, and offers to let her stay as long as she stays out of trouble, helps around the house, and never, in the slightest, tries to seduce him.
He then asks for miso soup then passes out. Ah, the life of a drunk.
Another perk (and in my opinion the most annoying) of being a drunk is the memory of a goldfish, I, like Yoshida, seem to be the buzzed type to please. Sure, everything sounds fine, we can do that tomorrow, just remember, I am not going to recall any of this come morning. Waking with a hungover and the aroma of miso he observes this strange girl prep him the breakfast he asked for in a haze of confusion and curiosity. Feeling him in on the details Sayu lays out the agreement they had in which he once again agrees.
I Shaved. Then I Brought A High School Girl Home, does quite literally what it says in the title. But what really surprised me is how wholesome it seems to be. Yoshida seemingly has NO interest in Sayu as a woman no matter how much she lays it on. He genuinely seems to want to help her, even searching missing persons to see if her family is even looking for her (shocker they aren’t), using his own money to buy her needed items and giving her a respectable amount of space (no matter how many times she tries to close that gap) What I Shaved done in one episode is take every stupid ecchi rom-com trope that exists within its title and turned away from it, the curious bit is where does it go from here? As I stated I have read the manga up to chapter 24 which was the latest at the time when I was reading it so I do know more than the average joe when it comes to this story. What is obvious without reading it is this, Sayu and Yoshida are going to have a head-on collision when it comes to romance, there is more than enough pretext in episode one of Sayu already falling for him, mostly due to the fact he doesn’t treat her like an object like everyone else has up to this point.
But that in and of itself is a problem. She is a high schooler, a runaway, and simply a girl that has carried way more baggage than anyone should have to, no matter the age. She is a victim of an unknown system that has forced herself to degrade and undersell her own worth just for a simple roof and warm bed. This is going to force Yoshida’s hand not only as a man, but as an adult, and it is going to be curious how the show handles it. Relationships between young and older individuals in anime are nothing new, the teacher trope alone is full of questionable feelings and critically can be called out for several social taboos. But as of episode one of this series, it seems to be trying to strive away from that completely, being more of a story about a guy who needs support, and a girl who needs it worse.
I will be watching this series weekly going forward, I wouldn’t expect an episode run down like this often, it just happened this first episode floored me more than I was expecting. As always thanks for the read!
Otaku Post 