Review of Teasing Master Takagi-san

Tonari no Seki-kun with the positions reversed and given a romantic edge. Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san is one of those animes where it's the "journey rather than the destination that counts", and in this regards is Takagi's teasing. The plot is very simple of Takagi voiced by Rie Takahashi teasing Nishikata voiced by Yuki Kaji but Nishikata tries to tease her back by over-analyzing things and fails. Where the "journey is better than the destination" works into this is because of most of the anime comprised of these two at it with mind games in making one of them blush and as LA said before thatmost if not ALL the time Nishikata's counter-teasing fails, the results are obvious, it's HOW Takagi rounds up Nishikata is where the beauty of this anime comes into.

There are other minor characters who has some limelight, namely Takagi's friends Mina Hibino voiced by Konomi Kohara, Sanae Tsukimoto voiced by Yui Ogura and Yukari Amakawa voiced by M.A.O who have their own comedy skit going on and sometimes they intermingle and even contribute later to Takagi's next teasing. Yukari are the cloudcuckoolander's minder of Mina and Sanae, Mina more often with her non sequitur and spur of the moments things she wants to do while Sanae encourages Mina and gets in on the action.

Now LA had heard both sides of the argument on whether Takagi or Nishikata are horrible characters, LA has heard that Takagi is an utter troll who gets Nishikata into trouble EVERY single time with Nishikata getting into trouble in the process, while LA has heard Nishikata is in the wrong by how he tries to HORRIBLY fail in trolling Takagi with some malicious intent. Now mind you LA doesn't see either of them as "horrible characters" however for LA, LA is on Nishikata's side for a "bad character" (which is LA's very loose definition by the way), as by all intents Takagi is mainly here for Nishikata's overreactions with her teasing and her liking Nishikata, while Nishikata tries desperately to repeat Takagi's teasing or comes up with an even more projected tease to try and embarrass Takagi and most obviously fails as Takagi has caught on already by this point and add that he's kinda dense in the romance department and him over-thinking things is a major sign he misses Takagi's real intent. So yeah LA did like Takagi as a character better however Takagi by all intents can't be "her" without Nishikata because without it we'd have no anime.

Which goes into LA's next point of the romantic edge Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san has, as Takagi mainly teases Nishikata through some romance teasing showing that she does like Nishikata and them both being adolescent kids they can't show their emotions that well most of the time thus for Takagi she uses her teasing to show that she likes Nishikata and it's shown throughout the anime that this is the case.

In terms of animation by Shin-Ei Animation, LA thought for the most part the character designs were fine but with some decent backgrounding added as well. The animation wasn't that bad but the animation for LA lies in the character emotions shown in simple but great detail of our main duo, as we KNOW how they are feeling at the time by them not even needing to speak and LA praise that highly animation-wise, other than that, not much beyond the decent character designs and backgrounding.

Now the voice acting, well for a rather minimalistic voice cast of 5, but the voice cast is excellent with Nishikata doing great in his overreactions and his schemes while Rie Takahashi's poker face and expert teasing vocals being masterfully done. LA hasn't heard Yui Ogura in her kuudere vocals in a while and this is also a first for LA hearing Konomi Kohara doing genki vocals as Mina in Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san. Overall the voice cast is kinda crucial to Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san thus LA would praise the voice cast as minimalistic as it is.

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san is soo simple in it's execution but works out great with the good chemistry of Nishikata and Takagi as characters and their mind games of trying to tease one another being interesting enough, the minor characters of our trio Mina, Yukari and Sanae was also good additions as they had their comedic moments as well as an inadvertent hand in some of Takagi's teasing later on. The animation was decent but with an excellent voice cast, LA wouldn't have seen Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san as nothing else. Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san by all means was a good watch and seeing Takagi's lingering romantic feelings shown more and more through her teasing for Nishikata was a nice touch to how the anime progressed in this not-so repetitive romantic comedy.

"If you blush, you lose."