Anime NYC 2022

Crunchyroll Premieres Tomo-chan Is a Girl!, Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro Season 2

ANN's coverage of Anime NYC sponsored by Yen Press!

Crunchyroll is premiering a sizable chunk of its winter 2023 season at Anime NYC 2023. Whereas Friday's premiere panel focused on fantasy series, Saturday's debuted two major romcoms: Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack, and Tomo-chan Is a Girl!

Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack

Do you even need to read a detailed preview for this? It's the second season of Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, last year's love-it-or-hate-it senpai-bullying comedy hit. Though the new season has switched directors and animation studios, the animation quality has stayed basically the same, with slightly different designs and less dramatic lighting choices. More importantly, the head writer is the same as Season 1, and the material continues everything you loved and/or hated from the first season.

I put the series in the “not for me” category. I get there's a playful kinkiness to the comedic bullying that gives it appeal and prevents it from being genuinely mean-spirited, but it's not my fetish. I don't find it particularly funny, so the show's a wash for me, even if I understand that it's technically well-executed. The gags which carried the most humor for me in this season premiere were the ones with the most self-awareness, such as the opening sequence where Naoto reads a shojo manga featuring all the tropes he endures/enjoys in real life and a scene in a sushi restaurant where Nagatoro gets called out on how immature her dumb jokes are.

Tomo-chan Is a Girl!

We got to see two episodes of this series, which seems like sign number one that the Crunchyroll team knows they got a winner on their hands with this one. This is my style as far as slice-of-life/rom-com anime go, with characters likable enough to root for but also comically flawed enough to get into all sorts of outrageous conflicts. Also, it's consistently funny!

Tomo-chan Is a Girl! establishes its premise and sets the high bar right from its opening scene: Tomo makes an intense confession of love to her childhood friend Jun… who completely misses that this confession is romantic. It's a straightforward introduction to the show's central couple: a rage-filled tomboy martial artist who's desperate to be seen as “girly” and desirable by her friend and a himbo so dense he can barely perceive that his friend is a girl, let alone one with feelings for him.

After establishing the main conflict so quickly and succinctly, these two episodes move rapidly through the 4-koma source material. Lest the miscommunications between Tomo and Jun become too one-note, these episodes also introduce a wide range of supporting characters to build up a more extensive web of friendships, romances, and rivalries.

I can't be sure yet what (if any) bigger statement the show is making about gender norms. I can see it going in both positive and negative directions in that regard, but some things give me hope. Even if the premise is that Tomo feels she needs to be more traditionally gender-conforming to attract Jun, other characters in the show affirm that she's desirable the way she is. The second episode demonstrates that the show can handle more serious storylines, with Jun genuinely caring for Tomo in the aftermath of an upsetting situation while still fitting in so much comedic material that the laughs are never gone for long.