Review of Teasing Master Takagi-san

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san is a romcom about a young girl (Tagaki) who spends her time constantly teasing and tormenting the boy she sits next to in class (Nishikita) while he tries to come up with a way to get back at her. The anime is very cutesy and charming and i'll admit the main reason I didn't watch it sooner was because the main characters are so young. I guess I misjudged it. This is a slice of life anime so there's little plot. Every episode is just a collection of small stories adapted from the manga. The character writing is where this anime shines. Nishikata narrateseverything with his internal monologue so you get a good idea of how he thinks, and Tagaki is very cunning and unafraid to push his buttons. The end result is lots of cute scenes between them.

I only have a couple of minor complaints. I was a bit disappointed with how Nishikata never really grows out of being constantly flustered and embarrassed. You'd think that after spending months being teased by Tagaki he would start to develop a thicker skin, but throughout the entire series he is just constantly embarrassed and overthinking everything. In moderation this would have been charming, but they overused it a bit too much.

There are also complaints about this anime ignoring a certain chapter from the manga (#31). Since there's a lot of chapters in the manga that were missed, it might just be that they were planning for a second season where they could use the remaining unused chapters. I dunno. The series did have a kind of anticlimactic ending so I can see why some people might be upset.

The art, sound and voice acting are all fine. I personally didn't really like how the characters had weirdly shaped balloon heads but that's a personal gripe.

Overall, Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san is a charming, cute romcom with more of a focus on romance. I give it a solid 8.