Review of Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro

Okay, let's start with the obvious: bullying is wrong and should not be justified in any way. Here, I'm critiquing characters and tropes and don't in any way sanction bullying. Naoto, the main character, absolutely sucks. He essentially plays an ecchi straight man insert character. He's the usual kind of character for this type of anime: a loser virgin bullied loner who just wants to avoid social interaction, read Vampire Boobies 3: Revenge of the Areola and play video games all day, and has never met or talked to a girl in his life. Unlike most pathetic nothing insert characters in ecchi, Naoto has a skill:he's good at drawing and painting. Still, for literally 90% of this anime, he's stuttering, blushing, and averting his gaze. Now, not every MC needs to be an OP chad or whatever, but I'm so tired of the pants-shitting losers who cannot do basically anything well. Naoto can't run, talk, ski, put in contact lenses, or do anything that an average person could do at least at a passable level. Honestly, I'm surprised he has the motor skills to walk to class and hold a pencil or the mental fortitude to decide what to eat for lunch. Nagatoro is the best and only thing that has ever happened in his life. Most of the show is set in the art room where he draws still lifes and occasionally Nagatoro.

Nagotoro is a mean girl with other mean girl friends who almost instantly likes him for no reason at all. Is she attracted to his useless passivity and pliability as a person? I have no idea. Anyway, she's like a 10 year old who's mean to the boy she likes so he'll notice her. Nobody can tease him but her, even if her friends try just to get on her nerves. Her bullying slowly makes him more confident in himself by revealing how timid and passive he is with literally everything in his life. That's the dynamic of this show: she teases him and slowly, a more serious relationship develops between them and he comes out of his shell (kind of). He tries to figure her out, while she puts him in ecchi situations, calls him a pervert, and tries to make him like her that way. Obviously, I just don't like his type of character at all, though he gets marginally better as it goes on. Even though she's mean and a bully, at least she's active and wants romance and character progress. She is definitely the best part of this show.

Their relationship is fine and the ecchi side of this anime at least hints at romantic development (unlike those chaste romances where just calling her by her first name is like climbing Everest), so if you're in a similar spot starving for legit romance in anime, I'd kind of recommend it. The horny scale is like a 5/10 for ecchi, so it's not overpoweringly that way, but basically every situation has some innuendo. The chance of an actual relationship in this anime seems promising because Naoto has made at least some character progress and Nagatoro, an active character, acknowledges that she likes him.