Score: B+

This was a cute first episode. It’s also the closest I’ll probably get to watching any of the shows airing this season dubbed! Joking aside it was a nice start to this show. The focus naturally remained locked in on the leads. It establishes their personalities and the interesting kind of language barrier they’ll be tackling. I’m sure the age gap here would draw much attention regardless of how Renji was certainly working to softly turn down Lily. But in the end I’ll just sit back and enjoy seeing where the story takes these two.

Technology saves the day

Language barriers can be tough. These days it’s not that bad since google translate is reasonably helpful in that area. And even Renji seemed to use it while writing his message. For much of the episode Lily and Renji were adorably awkward in terms of trying to get across what they wanted to say. Renji throwing his broken English out there. Lily of course was fluent, but that didn’t make things easy for Renji either. The solution of using a notebook is a fun way to handle things. Renji’s written English was actually very clear. This should certainly allow them to get some things across. Of course it’s not that convenient to constantly bust out a book so at times I’m sure they’ll have to return to less fluid back and forth verbal conversations.

I give full props to Sally Amaki for her work in playing Lily. The English was good and she even managed to do a nice job with that British accent.

Totally sending the wrong message!

So much of the fun in this episode came out of miscommunication. Renji struggling to explain why he was giving that Koala gift to Lily went with using Valentine’s Day to handle it. Lily of course took it as a pretty serious confession. Not one she was upset about since she was already starting to beautify Renji in her imagination! Her mom catching her getting pretty involved in rubbing her face against that plush!

The episode ended on a cute note as well. I love the absolute guts of Lily. She just throws down the gauntlet and makes the public declaration that she’ll make Renji fall in love with her. It of course doesn’t really land the same since he couldn’t fully follow what she was saying! Her making a hasty retreat out of embarrassment was perfectly adorable. It’ll be a tough one for her to pull that off, but I respect her confidence.

Lily was on fire!

You could go through the whole episode and just enjoy the fun their miscommunication led to. Lily wanting to go to the photo booth which was cute only for Renji to think she wanted to play the zombie shooting game! She utterly lost it for a while until she went into badass mode! I think everything (with Renji saying “I’ll protect you”) just made it too much for her to handle. Once she got going she became a shooting pro! Maybe nothing will quite match the absolute looks on her face while playing that racing game though!

Quite the stare on this guy…

In terms of a first episode this one did everything it needed to. Lily was a cute lead (I lament the future loss of her long hair ahead of time) and Renji is a perfect co-lead to run this show with her. Just a good guy that’s working part-time at that arcade. There will obviously be a nice sized cast as the show goes along. But keeping things focused on the leads to start is just the sensible approach. I haven’t spent much time in arcades so this should be fun just to dive into that setting a bit.

Not a show that I’ll cover for the season (there’s way too much this Summer). But I did want to give this cute episode a nod.