Review of A Girl & Her Guard Dog

This could have been sooooooo good…the set up of a girl falling for her yakuza bodyguard could have been sooooo good… and this just failed miserably. The show centers around Isaku, who is the granddaughter of a yakuza boss, and her goal of wanting to live a normal life. She enters high school with the hope of achieving that, but to her surprise, Keiya, one of her grandfathers underlings, enters high school with her (disguised as a student) “to protect her.” Needless to say, things don’t go entirely to plan. As I already stated, the concept could’ve been executed wonderfully, giving us a really great romanceanime. And yet… no.

So what happened?

Well, how about the fact that when Isaku is brought to live with her grandfather, she is five. This is also when she first meets Keiya. At this time, he is 15, and immediately declares himself as her guardian/brother, and promises to protect her from now. Yes, I said that right! He tells her to look at him in a parental role.

So, by the time she enters high school, at which point Keiya is 26 by the way, Isaku already loves him. To be fair, she never saw him in that way, she has always loved him in a romantic setting. But…The problem is that she doesn’t know if Keiya sees her as his child or lover!!!!!! What!?!?! Truly, she doesn’t know if his love is in the form of a guardian or not. WHY WHY WHY!!!!!! By doing this, it felt incredibly incestuous!

In order to have made this show really great, All they had to do was have Keiya assigned as her bodyguard from the beginning. And to VERY SIMPLY never have him in the position of being her “guardian.” Further, it would’ve made things a lot better if he was only a few years older than her when they first met. More specifically, if he was 10 when she was five, and again being automatically established as her bodyguard. Then the show could’ve dealt with how he was struggling to commit to his duties as her bodyguard, while also wanting to commit to her romantically. This would have been much more appealing!!

To add to what went wrong, I also didn’t understand, if he has all these appropriately aged attractive women seeking a relationship with him, then why would he want one with someone who’s only 16? It’s incredibly creepy to look at it from his perspective. There were a lot of scenes where Isaku looked very young next to him, and just made it more apparent how inappropriate this love pairing is.

Even further, to how really creepy he was sometimes, when he said, “you grew into the body type I like.” Like WTF?!? That’s really disturbing and just makes the fact that he watched her grow up since she WAS FIVE even worse.

This show is one of the most disappointing I’ve watched in a while because it truly had the potential to be really great. I definitely do not recommend unless you’re into this kind of thing.