EPISODE 1 SPOILER WARNING
It’s finally here. This is probably the anime I was most excited for this season. I’ve been wanting to read the LN for a long time, but never got the chance because I don’t like reading LNs digitally, so I have buy the physical copies, which costs money. Anyway, right off the bat this is a very interesting anime because while it’s your cliché high school romance with the super popular beautiful girl having a crush on the MC who’s just a nobody or a weeb or something, Alya’s VA, Uesaka Sumire, is actually fluent in Russian. Hearing Uesaka Sumire speak Russian in the trailers was pretty interesting. While I have heard her Russian before in things like Girls und Panzer and in youtube clips, it still feels so weird to hear Russian spoken in an Asian voice. Normally when I think of the Russian language, I think more of the harsh European way of speaking it, but hearing it in a cuter higher pitch feels like such a mix of weirdness and cuteness, but I like it. By the way, I still love that type of romance cliché. Alright, onto my actual thoughts of the first episode. If you haven’t watched it yet, go do so before reading since there will be spoilers.
Starting off right at the beginning of the episode, we see Alya walking to the school with everyone around her talking about how beautiful she is and stuff. Then some popular boy comes up to her and asks to have lunch with her and for her phone number, but Alya promptly declines both offers. I’m currently watching Masamune-kun’s revenge, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of that with this first scene because it has a similar scenario where Aki is asked out by a bunch of boys and she always rejects them and gives them a insulting nickname. That’s just a little thought I had while watching that scene. Next we see Alya sitting down in the classic back window seat where her desk is next to Kazu’s. Seeing Kazu sleeping on his desk like that reminded me of Tanaka-san, such a relaxing sight. When Alya wakes him up and asks him if he was staying up late watching anime again, I felt the just like me fr fr feeling because I can also relate to staying up to 1am watching anime instead of being healthy. Of course just like Kazu, I always end up falling asleep in school too, but math class is easy enough, so I just use that as my nap time. Giving feedback about anime in the middle of the night is also super relatable as I always share my thoughts about an anime I’m watching on discord or something when I should be sleeping. In fact, right now I’m writing this in the middle of the night lmao. There’s so much relatability in this scene, other than the fact that Kazu’s talking to a beautiful Russian girl.
In the next scene when Kazu isn’t paying attention in class and gets called on, that reminds me a lot of that one Takagi-san scene. In both this and Takagi-san, if my memory is correct, the main boy isn’t paying attention, then gets called on. They don’t know what question they’re on, so they look down at the girl. The girl points at the question, but their finger is over an answer, so the guy gives the wrong answer, and the girl proceeds to give the right answer. I found it funny that it was so similar. Alya acting like Takagi is so cute.
Just like the title of the anime says, Alya sometimes hides her feelings in Russian. Basically she says things that would normally be kinda embarrassing to say out loud or too someone, she just says in Russian since you wouldn’t expect anyone else to understand it. I also somewhat relate to this, because in my school there isn’t any Japanese people that I know of, and I don’t know of any other students that knows much Japanese, so sometimes just to mess around, I’ll say something in Japanese to confuse my classmates and then not tell them what it means. In this, Kazu does actually understand Russian, but if he tells Alya, then it’d be awkward since she’s saying embarrassing things. In my case though, it wouldn’t be embarrassing since I don’t say anything embarrassing, but it would make it less fun. Also like I said earlier, hearing Russian spoken by a Japanese girl is pretty cute.
I don’t really have much to say about the OP honestly. It’s pretty decent. Doesn’t really stand out much compared to other anime OPs, but it’s still pretty decent and I’d listen to it on my own.
This post is getting a little long, so I’m just gonna cover a few scenes that I wanted to point out, not tooooo much, probably. After the OP, we see Kazu playing a gacha game on his phone, and that is indeed based. I don’t think Alya understands how cool it is to get a good looking SSR waifu, but seeing her get jealous of it is so cute. Anime girl getting jealous over an anime girl is peak.
Next in the cafeteria, we come across Souo, the student council publicist. As you would expect from a cliché romance, the childhood friend has entered the chat. As we all know, the childhood friend never wins, so rip to her. There’s simply no competing with Alya. Also seeing Alya get jealous again when Souo moved closer to Kazu was also really cute. Cute faces too.
By the way, I just want to point out, that while Alya was running from Kazu, she jumped over the section of the wall thing that had those metal beams in it and went through the gap instead of jumping through one of the open ones. Interesting choice, but I guess you don’t normally think when you’re in the heat of it. Also when Kazu gave her the red bean soup and she accepts it with the tsundere look, that was cute. It reminds me of Saiki k being bribed with coffee jellies lmao.
Alright, lastly, the ED. I definitely like this more than the OP. This ED is pretty fun to listen to. Pretty groovy drum beat and nice guitar lick at the start of the song.
Well, that’s it for my thoughts on this first episode. Thanks for reading, and if you read all of it, damn, have a cookie. I didn’t expect to write 1300 words about this 1 episode while also holding myself back, but yeah, I like this anime. Definitely going to keep watching and excited for the next episode. Bye.
Also here’s a cursed screenshot I took for the memes
