I’ve noticed something as I got older. While I grew up liking the fanciful adrenalin of your Adventurous Shonen series or Mecha action. Now at my age the more slice of life or just fun characters interacting style anime appeals more and more. Not that those can’t be fanciful, last anime I discussed was Witch from Mercury. But let’s set the fantasy a bit lower, back down to Earth for this entry.

Originally a 4-koma or four panel manga series well known to be the go-to format for comedy. ‘Tomo-Chan is a Girl’ tells the story of Tomo Aizawa. A tomboyish red head who has just declared her love to long-time friend Junichiro Kubota.. who just laughs it off as if she was playing with him like a good old chum.

And so we get a comedy where Tomo is convinced the problem is Junichiro doesn’t see her as a woman, an idea that is put forward by her friend, that may be somewhere on the evil scale, Misuzu Gundou. Tomo is very tomboyish after all, and did join the boys’ karate club as she was too strong for all the female ones… and still beats everyone. The show is a comedy and very easy watching . For viewing it I did use the dub and I found that very good. Comedy being one of the hardest genera to translate especially from a different language. But the show didn’t seem to have a problem with that. Extra mention goes to the phenomenal work of  Sally Amaki who voices Carol Olston in both languages, she becomes Tomo’s other female friend with Misuzu, in fact the interactions of Sally and Misuzu are very enjoyable as one is a dark brooding manipulator while Carol is this impossibly happy bundle of joy.

The episodes are often broken up into 2 main sections that show Tomo’s friendships and life while also trying to get Junichiro to think of her as a woman. We get a few parts that go into their past such as when they first met, which does show that Junichiro at first thought Tomo was a boy and was later shocked meeting back up with her sometime later and she’s wearing a girl’s uniform.

So yes this is an enjoyable light watch. You’re not going to get moments where you dread watching on out of fear for what happens to the characters. It’s a bunch of friends in this amusing little rom com. And unlike some western rom coms ( i.e. most of them) it’s not painful to watch.

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