Mar 6, 2017
"You know my nature inconveniences me in multiple ways, don't you?"
Demi-chan wa Kataritai is a series that really shouldn't work. It takes tropes that became popular in porn VNs and doujinshi, and removes the porn. It won't even walk the line between the comedic and the erotic, like Monster Musume, and decides instead to use its premise to talk about disabilities, acceptance, and the feeling of community that comes around people when they recognize how their impairment affects their lives. If I had known about this premise before watching the series, to be honest, I wouldn't have. What are the chances of this being
...
tasteful?
Turns out it can be done. The main characters in the series are removed enough from real world disabilities that the comedic parts of their lives don't feel wrong, but not so much that I can't see that they are struggling in some ways - I can laugh about the relationship between Takahashi, the stoic biology teacher whose interest in demihumans kickstarts the series, and Satou, who happens to have been born a succubus and affects people around herself accordingly. But I can also see how not being connected with her sexuality affects Satou, bringing her to isolate herself and beware human connections, much like a real life sex addict would have to. It's fun and fine to laugh at a dullahan girl's misadventures with her head, where she gets nauseated when carried around too carelessly, but the series also calmly shows you how her physical limitations mean that she needs reasonable authority figures who empathize with her and adjust the rules of the school to her condition and for her safety.
Moreover, this is never done with a sledgehammer, with flowing tears and melodrama followed by a 4Koma like sketch. The writers know that just a brief remark or acknowledgment suffice to make us aware of how, for instance, she needed to train herself to write without seeing the paper she is writing on, since she can't move her head between the blackboard and the paper like a normal person would. These notes do wonders in showing us characters that feel like real people, while letting the laughs flow.
This tension between the comedic and the dramatic works because of the character work, and it's really tastefully done. I don't feel like saying things like 'the vampire girl is about showing you how a highly visible distinction and disability can affect family life' because, even if the show does showcast it (when they point out that her father and sister dye their hair to make her stand out less, for instance), she isn't just about that. She has also many traits that could work with any other anime girl in high school story, and that helps her not be a one-dimensional lesson to be taught, but part of a fun narrative that, while maybe not epic in scope, beautifully animated, or dramatically superbly constructed, I am having great fun following along this season.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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