Review of Rokudo's Bad Girls

In the history of harem anime, never before have I seen such a premise as this. If the anime adaptation had come just before the advent of the abundance of similar shows like it, this show would have stood a chance. But as it stands, mangaka Yuuji Nakamura's completed series of Rokudou no Onna-tachi a.k.a Rokudo's Bad Girls, coming in at 233 chapters in 26 volumes that was serialised between June 2016 and April 2021, Satelight's anime adaptation being a chunk of change for the experience of selling the manga to anime-onlies, in my opinion, it's honestly too late of a call that it feelsarbitrary and contrived to take an old work/property and suddenly poise it onto the podium, only for it to get booed off the stage. It's honestly not bad...but it isn't great either.

Everyone wants to experience a school life that is fulfilling and meaningful, right? And truer than not, it is most certainly the case with the MC, Rokudo Tousuke, along with his close clique of Colonel Masaru Hinomoto and Chief Kouta Kijima. The wish-fulfilment dream of a life that anybody so desires can come true, and in no doubt at all, it applies to the trio of physically weak and cowardly boys in a reality that hits harder than most, for their school, Amori High, is a delinquent/gangster wasteland of a place that knows of no peace. With this peace that sounds easy on the ears being the hardest and most out of reach, the desperation of the trio got to the point of wanting to find a way out of this rut, and it landed squarely on a mysterious package from his long-deceased grandfather. Inside the package, are a priest's uniform and a mysterious scroll that has been passed down for generations since the Heian period and is said to hold a technique to ward off demons and evil spirits. Thinking that this will be the end to all of their troubles, Rokudo undergoes the ritual to activate the scroll's power, which, when implanted on him, showcases a pentagram on his forehead, and nothing else. The effect of the scroll is not apparent from the start since it doesn't give Rokudo any powers, but it soon becomes perceptible that the spell within the scroll, which was used to exorcise demons back in the day, now becomes a power that harem fans would've loved...but in an obscene way, since it only attracts bad girls once eye contact is made. Sensing the potential of this power, the peace-loving Nakama friendship can finally be realised, though at the expense of bad girls chasing after Rokudo's butt as the latter vows to be strong in the process.

Each girl that Rokudo meets, whether coincidentally or naturally, has an issue/problem to be resolved. Take the main girl, Ranna Himawari, for example. For one, Ranna holds the distinction of being a notorious Sukeban a.k.a delinquent girl leader wielding a sword, someone who is described as a "monster" because of her sheer strength and brutality, for her otherwise expressionless self who does not speak much. It's only because of Rokudo's power that her cold-blooded, stone-cold, and closed heart begins to break, showing off that Ranna is just like a typical girl, who wants to spend her life and time with others and protect them as she sees fit, if one gets to know her in depth. But as is the main story and plot, Rokudo's world is rocked by delinquents left and right, be it from gangs or even his closest classmates through Haruya Iinuma and his gal Tsubaki.

Like Ranna, every girl down the line will face the same situation: once they make eye contact with Rokudo, they will see the lovable dork, chase after him, and fight to the death to be his one and only partner of choice. Aside from the fact that all of the girls that Rokudo chances upon have their names referenced to actual flowers (translated from Japanese), Rokudo is essentially a good dude in heart, and like any other good friend, he helps rehabilitate most of the girls both in school and society, with the causal effect being either genuinely falling in love with him or becoming a close ally. Initially, his refusal to fight in the beginning of the story has him labelled as a pipsqueak, but thereafter, the tenacity and dismissal to run away garner respect, even from his former bullies. It shows that there can be good within the bad, and I admire Rokudo's heart to turn situations of grievous hurt into communication and reconciliation. With the power of friendship with the Colonel and Chief, the trio are a bunch of people that put forth their troubles together to accomplish a common goal, and that move spurs them on as they get more support from progressing bad delinquent girls, like Amori High's shortie bancho Sayuri Osanada and the motorcycle girl of the police-like righteous belief of Azami Himeno. Regardless, this is still an "unintentional" harem work of sorts, and it's still pretty much plastered in your face, whether you like it or not, and that would be pretty much the manga's selling point of a weakling being roughed up by "nurtured" bad girls to the point of love, romance, and friendship. It's reinventing the harem genre at a time when the concept feels fresh, but nowadays, it's nothing more than a stigma of being the beta rather than the alpha.

Satelight's adaptation of the manga...to be honest, feels very rough to the eyes. Just imagine if your staff team has these people: a character designer, a sub-character designer, a mechanical designer, and a prop designer. That's so many designers for a show that does not need this many to begin with. It feels a heft undercooked that there are so many people that are called onto the team, mostly for assistance, because it is very clear that debut director Keiya Saito and his staff team are the bunch of people that you'll only see in B or C-grade shows that deliver to the expectations of the top brass at the mercy of producers just wanting to go and get by life having another area of work to do, because humans need work to be sufficient. I already had low expectations of the manga, to be honest, because it was a matter of timing and preference to capitalise on the anime only now, for whatever reasons. For one, Rokudo's character design looks like a wank in comparison to his manga counterpart, which, at least thanks to the illustration, has some detail on it. With the anime, all that is lost in translation, being hammered by an overall B or C-grade team whose work is just enough to provide a bowl of rice for another day.

The music is subpar as well. Even though this is EverdreaM's debut Anisong, which is the Seiyuu rock vocal unit of Misato Matsuoka and Hitomi Sekine, the song doesn't inspire much and just feels like a song that beckons you to immediately click the "Skip Intro" button. Furthermore, I am not a fan of EXILE TRIBE's songs, which have this urban, contemporary hip-hop rockability sound that's exclusive to Avex Pictures, and pretty much my feelings about The Rampage's ED are the same when it comes to the boy band.

If Rokudo no Onna-tachi was found by some anime producer years back when the anime had just been serialising for a year or two at that point, the anime could've been a moderate success at the time when we were all about Isekai Smartphone (the initial Season 1) and its ludicrious Nakama harem, so much so that it's a guilty pleasure that's good. But this is 2023, not 2017-2018, and whoever thought that it'd be good to release the anime now, it's clearly an afterthought that bears no weight when all is said and done. In the current era where works like Kanojo, Okarimshimasu a.k.a Rent-A-Girlfriend exists to sour the audience more with salt, this show could've leveraged being different in a unique way. However, it's lacklustre and stringed-out story (which is supposed to be for the good) backfired it from being a decent, if not average show, which I got bored fast.

If you absolutely need the hijinks of a gang-laden ride, this is not the show for you, much less the "harem's at stake" plotline. There are better harem shows out there, and this can easily be skipped and whizzed past into forgotten memory.