Review of Teasing Master Takagi-san

“Don’t tease me bro!” -(Dat forehead though) Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san, or, Skilled Teaser Takagi-san as the gringos say, is an anime that I feel a lot of people are getting the wrong impression of. Takagi-san is an adaptation of the manga of the same name by Souichirou Yamamoto that also pays homage to characters from his previous manga, Ashita no Douyubi (Tomorrow’s Saturday). Takagi-san wasn’t necessarily a project that caught my eye given any one name attached to its credits, if I’m being honest here I didn’t even bother to read a premise. I’d go so far as to say it was a series thatI watched on a whim to keep up my facade of “seasonal garbage-eater”. And what I got out of it was a Slice of Life series that worked for me on almost every level. I don’t typically go out of my way to white-knight shows I enjoyed, but Takagi-san managed to capture my heart and imagination with something that so few series of its ilk offer nowadays, charm.

Time for the technicals. Animation this time around was done by Shin-Ei, probably most known in the west for “My Neighbor Seki” but perhaps most famous for producing the monstrously popular “Doraemon” and “Crayon Shin-chan”, two franchises that never translated well in the West but have remained relevant for decades in Japan. The series was helmed by Hiroaki Akagi, a director whom beyond a few key animation and episode credits has remained a relative unknown until now. Slice of Life series tend to sneak up on me when it comes to the quality of their animation, and that’s probably due to the lack of action set-pieces to grab me by the horns. But even I get sick of Yutapon cubes, laser light shows, and obnoxious movement lines. Takagi-san’s average was consistently high, and on first viewing, it never dipped under that average. On the other hand, it never set out to impress with dynamic and polished sakuga as much as it aimed to keep everything polished and vibrant. Some studios take liberties with the art-styles of certain source-materials (e.g. Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul, *cough* Berserk) but from what little I’ve read of Yamamoto’s manga, I can say confidently that his art-style was translated pretty accurately from panel to screen (not that his art-style is all that unique to begin with).

The soundtrack is about as unassuming as you could imagine. Slice of Life series have the most potential to have varied soundtracks, unfortunately, this was not one of those shows to creep up on me with its fantastic composition. Rie Takahashi, as always, is a great singer and provided a not entirely skippable opening theme. Some of the ending themes throughout this show’s run were also pretty catchy.

Instead of harping on the relatively average score and middling theme songs, I’d like to pontificate on Yuki Kaji and Rie Takahashi’s performances as the two leads. Because of his youthful rasp, Kaji has a natural aptitude for and tends to shine in these younger roles. Pair that with Rie Takahashi’s perfectly smug cadence and you have one of the better casting choices for a series in a while. Kaji and Takahashi have such good chemistry that they may as well have recorded all of their sessions in the booth ad-libbing off each other. With a series whose quality is contingent on the chemistry between its two leads, Kaji and Takahashi provided two of their best performances to date, practically making the lines of dialogue jump right off of the page. They loved their roles so much in fact that they helped produce a chapter of the still ongoing manga together with Yamamoto. For you dub purists out there, for reasons mentioned earlier, I can’t in good conscience recommend watching this series dubbed. Funimation has been producing consistently better dubs in their “SimulDub” program, and while the Takagi-san dub is no exception, Aaron Dismuke and Sarah Wiedenheft don’t come close to having the amount of chemistry that Kaji and Takahashi do.

Takagi-san is a series whose content could be argued, on a surface level, to be repetitive. In fact, that’s such a surface level observation that 99% of the negative reviews being posted about this series have taken the liberty of framing a good chunk of if not their entire review on this observation. While some might find Takagi-san’s repetitive nature to be a detriment to its quality, I’d argue that it’s only repetitive for viewers who are too caught up in the “teasing” gimmick, which entirely misses the point of the series. Not only that but narratively, Takagi-san is episodic, series that by definition are MEANT TO BE REPETITIVE. Takagi-san, first and foremost, never set out to be more than an episodic Slice of Life series with light romantic-comedy elements peppered throughout. It doesn’t pride itself on conjuring up intricate punchlines every episode or populating its cast with over-the-top joke-factory characters. Takagi-san plays to its strength, and that strength is the relationship and chemistry between its two leads.

So many other Slice of Life series to come out with similar premises would’ve easily taken either an obnoxiously mawkish or unbearably sophomoric approach to its content. Instead, Takagi-san’s meat and potatoes is an honest and refreshing innocence. The measured and “repetitive” approach to the comedy is deliberate, creating a believable rapport between characters at this age. Nishikata and Takagi are the centerpieces, clearly, but that’s not to discredit the sporadic segments featuring the charming trio from “Tomorrow’s Saturday”. The low-key vibe that this series will often utilize makes it teeter closely towards the unambitious yet steadily growing “healing” subgenre, but the characters are grounded and believable enough to where it’s not just a gaggle of perpetual tropes getting away with providing the bare minimum.

Takagi-san may unfortunately never get the credit it deserves. In this ever stressful political climate where society is inundated by snarky edgelords squeezing laughs out of fart jokes, nihilism, and sardonic humor, Takagi-san has little room to breathe. Takagi-san is a much smarter show than it might seem on its surface. When you strip this show down to its most basic elements, the comedy deliberately makes up very little of what this series is truly made of. Instead, Takagi-san focuses more on believably pacing and portraying this burgeoning relationship between two infinitely likable characters.

It's that forehead, man.