60 were impressed!
15 were flustered with pacing
15 had adaptation grievances
10 were bullied to death
Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san is certainly a poison to the overly sensitive, but for someone like me the Nagatoro MANGA is a very sweet nectar. I found that the Nagatoro anime adaptation was fine. Just fine though, and for a lot of reasons I would pretty much just recommend reading the manga. I don’t like being a manga snob, but this is one of those times and I’ll be happy to detail why. I will of course provide light descriptions of scenes so if that’s spoilers to you then you have my rating above and have a good day.
Really the anime looked great, and as impressive as the first 10 minutes of the first episode was, I was expecting a killer show this season, but even in the first episode there is a crack that shows on the surface on something as delicate as this property. I’ve written before on how shows like Ishuzoku Reviewers walk a very delicate line with their subject material and something like Nagatoro is no exception. When someone is reading the Nagatoro manga much of the comedic timing and tone of how things are said can be adjusted and tempered in the readers mind without thinking. It is a monumental task for an animation studio to adapt a manga and make a property that feels to a viewer just like its source would in reading.
The big players more than anything I felt were timing and direction. Every joke, every interaction, and every payoff feels like it was dragged out or overexaggerated. A simple interaction in the first episode of Nagatoro trying to give senpai a playful push only to knock him on his face (indicating Nagatoro had taken things too far) was animated as a Looney Toons tier scene where Nagatoro pushes him and he proceeds to roll like a tire into a creek complete with cartoon noises. The interaction was overemphasized, it was loud, and it detracted from the overall point of the scene.
It may seem small, but when you change the details of interactions between characters, the tone of a scene changes and the perceived growth of a character to a viewer can be significantly affected. A strong example of this is in a later scene where Senpai works up the courage to ask Nagatoro to walk home with him while she is sitting with her other Kogal friends AND they’re being talked to by other boys (oh no!) This scene is written in the anime so that Senpai cowers behind a tree until he is practically forced out of hiding where he then proceeds to stutter all over himself until Nagatoro happily accepts along with the rest of her friends. This scene plays out more or less the same in the manga, but either through the need to have running air time or through active choice Senpai comes off as frustratingly weak in the anime where as in the manga chapter I found the scene to be a good step forward for his confidence.
In addition to the minor changes there were omissions of some chapters but inclusions of other omake chapters or even a fair amount of entirely new scenes with the latter mostly feeling like they were only added to pad time. Original content is definitely fine and often welcome by me, KyoAni’s Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is an excellent example of good adaptation with extra content, but what we got with Nagatoro left me feeling cynical and unsatisfied.
Everything wasn’t terrible though. Really a majority of scenes were adapted pretty well so as a manga reader viewing the show to see panels come to life there were a lot of my favorite interactions from the early chapters of Nagatoro come to life. I literally could not hear anything but Deku (HeroAca) from Daiki Yamashita in his role as Senpai which was bloody hilarious. Nagatoro’s VA Sumire Uesaka did a great job, with my grievances placed firmly on scene direction. Honorable mentions go out to the VA’s for all of Nagatoro’s friends as well with special mention to Aina Suzuki who voices best girl Yoshi and Shiori Izawa as Sakura doing her best Mamiko Noto impression (I seriously thought she was Noto because her Sakura sounds so much like Elsa Granhiert from Re:Zero).
If you have nothing else to watch, a fun group of friends, or just really love the source material I would give Nagatoro a view. If none of those things apply, I’d steer far away from this show. Seriously, just read the manga.
