Review of My First Girlfriend is a Gal

I feel like I'm obligated to put a disclaimer at the beginning of this review: having heard the opinion of various sources I watched the dub, not the sub of Hajimete no Gal. I have to start off by saying that in most areas Hajimete no Gal is a completely average anime. The story is pretty typical romcom. Main guy is more popular than he realizes, something good happens to him, same old same old. The art? Alright. Had some good areas, had some really not good areas, but it's that kind of obviously not high budget typical romcom kind of animation that I've grown asoft spot for. The sound track is nothing to rave about, and honestly both the opening and ending were forgettable.

This is where things start to pick up though and where I try to justify my score. For one, I loved the characters. It was one of the few anime where the main character had some generic friend group where you could actually feel their connection to that group. His friends, save the blonde one whose name I can't even remember, were full of personality. While the main character himself was kind of the generic plug in character sort, even he showed to have a surprisingly round personality in the dub. One thing I felt was a nice touch was the kind of modern take on some typical romcom stereotypes. Take Yui, your typical two faced princess who refers to the main character as her" dog who winds up being a cam girl who only shows her true nature to her fans online.

I really enjoyed this dub. Enough that I'd recommend anyone even remotely curious about this anime who doesn't have an issue watching dubs to give the dub a shot. While I know many of the voice actors don't have a lot under their belt, they did a good job with their characters. And the script was hilariously written. Whoever localized this thing deserves a raise. The references of "cucks" and pop culture references towards reddit and the like, it really worked.

Overall, it's a fun show, at least as a dub. While it doesn't really hold any rewatchability to make me come back to it in the future, it was a good experience and I would happily watch a season 2.