Review of Teasing Master Takagi-san

Do you ever tease someone? Is there somebody that you just love getting under their skin, or maybe you just love their reactions? Sure, teasing is a lot better when you’re the one doing it. The person getting teased usually doesn’t enjoy it, but teasing typically has no malicious intent. As weird as it seems we often tease the people we love. There are many ways to show affection after all. Our story centers around Nishikata and Takagi, two friends and classmates who are very competitive with each other. Takagi loves to tease Nishikata whenever the two of them are together, this often leads toNishikata getting in trouble in class. These two love to try and one-up each other, but Takagi is often the winner of their tease battles. “I’ll get her next time,” is what Nishikata often thinks, but will he ever actually get the upper hand? Hilarity ensues as these two friends fight the ultimate tease war, a war that is most definitely one-sided. This may seem like a pretty simplistic concept, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Teasing Master Takagi-san knows exactly what it wants to do and does its best to honor that. It wants to make a sweet and funny love story of two friends who constantly try and get the better of each other, and it does a fantastic job.

There is a very small cast of characters in Teasing Master Takagi-san. Again, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You have Nishikata, our main character who is at the mercy of Takagi, and Takagi, the scarily intelligent master of teasing herself. Nishikata is pretty naive (I want to say stupid at times as well) and is always falling for Takagi’s tricks. You’d think he would catch on to her by now and keep his guard up, but it isn’t entirely his fault, Takagi knows exactly how to manipulate him to get a reaction she wants. She’ll also often manipulate Nishikata to think or say something perverted then viciously tease him for it, again showing how cunning and sometimes cruel Takagi can be. I’d talk about the side characters a bit, but there honestly isn’t that much to talk about. They fall into archetypes for the most part and aren't that memorable. They’re a nice diversion from the tease war and that's about it.

The art isn’t the best thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s far from bad. There’s aren’t any noticeable quality drops, at least that I’ve noticed. It gets the job done fine. I will say that I don’t think I’ve watched an anime that had character designs quite like these. When I say that I mean Nishikata and Takagi mostly, the rest of the cast is pretty normal. I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t see many characters that look like Nishikata. I also really adore Takagi’s design. Again, I don’t know what it is and can’t exactly put it into words. They both just look different and I love it. Something I love about the opening is how much personality they managed to cram into it. You watch this opening and you get a great look into the characters of both Nishikata and Takagi. You also get a good grasp of who the side characters are in the second or two they’re on screen. I think it’s impressive to get that through in such a short amount of time. The opening song “I Didn’t Say That,” and the whole thing in general just bleeds personality and is really nice. This anime has quite a few endings, 7 to be exact. Now the visuals usually change slightly between each ending, but the song is different for each of them. Having that many songs for a 12 episode series is pretty incredible. They could’ve just had one normal ending for every episode and have one more for the last episode, but they went beyond that. That amount of work definitely deserves some praise. As someone who tends to skip endings unless I really like them, this series is a little wake-up call that will make me watch them for now on. I never want little details to go unnoticed like that again.

I also want to give special credit to Takagi’s VA. I love her voice and her laugh and they both fit Takagi’s character so incredibly well. I couldn’t imagine another voice for Takagi honestly, it’s fantastic.

If you’re looking for a fun anime to watch, one that you don’t have to think too hard about, one where you can just relax and take in the characters and adorable story, you could do a lot worse than Teasing Master Takagi-san. I was originally going to watch this when it was airing, but for one reason or another, I never did. Man, am I glad I came back to it. With all that being said, This was just my opinion and isn’t any more or less valid than anyone else’s. As always I highly recommend you watch it for yourself and form your own opinions.

Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.

And as a little side note get excited for season 2 this year, I know I am.

I give Teasing Master Takagi-san 8 blushing Nishikata’s out of 10