NouCome Is This Past Season’s Funniest Anime

When this fall anime season hit its midway point last month, I knew My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy deserved a place on the list of five anime you should be watching. This is because it is easily the funniest anime I watched this past season. Good – Great Comedic Premise My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy—or “NouCome” as it is commonly abbreviated due to its abnormally long title—is a comedy built on a ridiculous premise. Kanade is your average, relatively attractive high school boy who one day becomes afflicted with the supernatural curse of “absolute choices.” Randomly throughout his day he is plagued by sudden multiple choice quizzes—often perverted ones—in which none of the answers are desirable. For example, he may be forced to choose between eating a discarded porno magazine he has found in a park or rubbing said magazine on his face and sniffing loudly. If he does not pick either choice, he is left in excruciating pain until he does. Good – Layered Humor While this premise alone makes for an anime y1 com games rife with comedic possibilities, what takes NouCome to a level beyond is its use of layered humor. The first is the obvious layer mentioned above—the absurd choice he has to make. The second layer is then actually watching Kanade carry out that choice. The third layer, where the anime really shines, is how the people react to him. Simply put, no one reacts as you would expect—i.e., as they would in most high school anime. For example, after being forced to ask his friend Furano to touch his “breasts” (the other option was for him to ask to touch hers), she reacts by mishearing him and devolving into a rant about the word “bresticles” instead of a more expected reaction like slapping him or shrieking. It is simply hilarious. https://kotaku.com/the-five-anime-of-fall-2013-you-should-be-watching-1464184518 But perhaps my favorite gag is the reoccurring one that comes after the credits of each episode where we revisit one of the episode’s quizzes and then see what would have happened if Kanade had picked a different choice. Good – No Clear Frontrunner Let’s be clear from the start, NouCome is very much a harem anime—meaning there is one male lead character and all the female mains are his potential love interests. However, what makes this different from most harem anime is that there is no clear frontrunner. Y1 COM Usually in harem anime, there is one girl who is obviously going to be his choice in the end. This is because she will have more of the show’s runtime spent on her and thus gets more development than the others. In this case, however, the female characters all get roughly equal screen time and development. More than that, though, all are entertaining and unique from one another. Together with Kanade most are part of the “reject five”—as they are all very attractive people but have one fatal flaw that deems them “undateable.” For Kanade himself, he is blacklisted for doing random embarrassing things (due to the curse); Furano, the girl who sits behind him, has a deadpan and pun-tastic sense of humor; Oka, his childhood friend, acts more like a grade school student than a high school one. The remaining harem member is Chocolat, the angel tasked with helping him break the curse—though she would rather just sit around eating junk food. All in all, they make for a great cast in a Y1 Games comedy anime. Mixed – Fan Service, Pandering and Sexual humor NouCome has no delusions about what it is and embraces its fanservice and pandering wholeheartedly. You will see panty shots, accidental groping, and loads of other cliché anime sexual situations. And while the humor does not always have a sexual element, the majority of the time it does. This is an anime built around sexual humor—and very funny sexual humor at that. That said, this type of humor is not for everyone. Simply put, if you don’t think seeing a girl get shot in the boob so hard with a water gun that said boob hits her own face and knocks her out, this may not be the series for you. Bad – The Magic Reset Button The biggest weakness of NouCome is the show’s driving need to return to the status quo by the end of every episode—or at least by the beginning of the very next one. Constant mind wipes and convenient amnesia serve to undo any major character development mere moments after each and every grand revelation. This means that, while funny, the series is a one-trick pony dependent on its slapstick and sexual humor to carry the show. And while the humor is no doubt up to the job, a stronger plot with developing characters would serve to make the series even better. Final Thoughts If you are looking for a good laugh, there are few better places to go in the anime world than an episode of NouCome. The witty writing and layered humor make each and every episode enjoyable, if not downright hilarious. Even if harem anime, sexual humor, and/or “moéblob” characters are not normally your thing, NouCome is certainly worth trying. You might be surprised at how much you enjoy it. My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy aired on Tokyo MX in Japan. It is available for free and with English subtitles in the United States on Crunchyroll. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am. To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @BiggestinJapan