天下制覇

Who I love and drool on constantly.

Impressions:

Whoever created this greatly underestimated how disturbing it is to carry a severed doll head everywhere with you, while talking to it and drooling every time that you look at it. This does not give off the intended vibe of "this dude is really into making clothes for dolls and excited for his hobby." More like future serial killer who will be constructing the Japanese Chucky any day now, if he manages to hold himself back from having sex with it first. It was not a great start, would be the takeaway here. Maybe the open-mouthed drooling grin every time he looks at his pet severed doll head is less creepy in the manga, maybe flipping quickly through the pages instead of dwelling on how much of a personality-less sad sack he is… uh… also makes him less creepy, but goddamn, your protagonist here is bad.

Aside from the charisma of the male lead being in the negatives instead of at zero though, this is definitely an episode I've seen a billion times before. A sad sack protagonist meets a manic pixie girl. They have one thing in common and so are bonded at the hip forever. Relationship to develop over the next fifty-two to six-hundred-and-twenty-eight chapters. Which also frustrates me because I honestly don't know what there is to say about this one. I don't know what the distinguishing characteristics here are from the other fortyseven ones of this I've seen, aside from, again, the dude obsessed with a severed doll head. 

For it to work, it needs more than just drawing the manic pixie girl's eyes especially sparkly during The Big Moment. You can play into the comedy side, make her not just manic, but genuinely neurotic and obsessed with sex while simultaneously terrified of it and any relationships. I quite enjoyed that comedy, which was also an actual relationship might I add. Or really go ham on the relationship angle. Dive straight in to the drama and development that if you're lucky, anime will only take eight episodes to reach, and more likely, three to four seasons, if not just punting on it entirely and saying to read the manga. Less of my bag, but at least it give something to write about. Was it bad? Eh, not really if you're into these kinds of things. Did it do a single thing particularly well or notable in any way? The goddamned severed doll head and drooling over it.