Greetings, fabulous people of the Internet! Hanime on Anime here, and I tried. I really, really tried. I tried so hard to watch this show, and I’m in disbelief that some people actually enjoyed this.
Oh yeah, I’m gonna be tearing today’s anime show a new one.
I admit that I knew the premise of this anime before watching it and already had a bias against it. But I tried my hardest to have an open mind but couldn’t get through it. And, believe it or not, it was for reasons I wasn’t expecting.
Unlike last week’s series, this will be a nightmare to recall and a lot to unpack, so let’s do this. Let’s start today’s review on Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro!
Introverted high schooler Naoto Hachioji tries to find peace and quiet in the library to draw his manga. But after a brief encounter with a group of female students, one of them finds his work and starts to tease him about it. The next day, this same student, a first-year named Hayase Nagatoro, starts to barge in on Naoto and constantly harasses him. She also refers to him as ‘Senpai’ because he’s an upperclassman. However, as this continues and the two start to hang out more, Nagatoro does get better, and Naoto begins to toughen up.
But it’s too bad I couldn’t get through this series long enough to see that happen.
I pulled a Call of the Night on it and flat-out stopped watching the show barely halfway and in the middle of an episode. That’s how bad it got.
Before I go into why this anime was so awful, I knew about it to some degree before watching it. And the biggest detail that stuck out to me was that Nagatoro was the bully in this. And if you know me or are familiar enough with this blog, you’d know I hate bullies. In my honest opinion, these characters are written to be hated and have little redeemability to them. And while there has been one exception to this, that being Bakugo from My Hero Academia, I knew Nagatoro would be the most challenging part of this show.
But as it turns out, Nagatoro was the least of this anime’s problems.
What pissed me off the most was the actual bullying itself. A lot of the behavior Nagatoro exhibits is primarily sexually based. She makes lewd comments and jokes, constantly calls Naoto a pervert or nasty, and forces him to touch her in inappropriate games. And in all of this, Naoto is uncomfortable and refuses to do anything she suggests.
This is sexual harassment.
And yet, it’s acceptable. That crossed a big, fat line with me.
And don’t get me started on two of her ‘friends’ (there’s a reason why I put that in loose quotations) cause they were worse.
Not only did they jump in on the bullying, but there was a scene that I can only describe as the worst moment in the show I’ve ever seen. While Naoto is having lunch in the art room, the two come in and bother him. And then, they suggest Naoto touch their boobs, to which one of the girls holds Naoto down and forces him to touch the other’s breast.
But fortunately, in the end, Naoto grabbed some sticky buns stuck in the girl’s shirt. Again, this is supposed to be the comedic portion of the anime. This is the kind of behavior that gets you suspended in school nowadays. I thought Hikaru and Kaoru acting incestuously in Ouran High School Host Club was uncomfortable. And if that weren’t enough, when Nagatoro wasn’t the nasty perv here, she was annoying.
Nagatoro can get quickly grating. She’s loud and obnoxious and always making dirty jokes. And the sad thing is that she is a genuinely fascinating character. There are moments when she is nice or shows a different side. But the anime goes through this cycle where, by the end of it, those moments are destroyed, and she goes back to being this nasty little bully.
So, making sexual harassment a joke and ruining a decent character is about as low as possible for me. But in all fairness, the series does have a heart.
One nice thing I can say about Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, is that, as I mentioned earlier, Nagatoro is a fascinating character.
She clearly dislikes the company she keeps and shows genuine care for Naoto. Though going back to her friends, they’re the biggest influencers on her behavior and the biggest reason she acts the way she does. These friends of hers are toxic, but she stays with them. And that’s the more intriguing part because it does make you wonder why she continues to hang out with them. If the show’s disgusting sense of humor didn’t get in the way of that, I would have found out why.
Also, while I almost consider this a downside, the anime is predictable enough to where you can pick up on certain aspects of the story and characters, like Nagatoro being unamused by her friends, yet she keeps them around. This does hurt it because it ruins some character moments with Nagatoro, but it does help in letting the audience know that there’s more going on with the behavior.
Again, maybe if some of the anime’s more disgusting elements weren’t so in your face, I’d have stuck around long enough to find out more about this. But as it stands, I don’t want to deal with this show any more than I already have.
Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro obviously rubbed me in all the wrong ways. I couldn’t stand its approach of using sexual harassment and bullying as its running gags. And that’s a big shame because Nagatoro is a good character with some intriguing discussion backing her up. Not to mention the story has a good and unmistakable message. But yeah, I can only say that rather than telling Miss Nagatoro to stop toying with me, I’d tell her to screw off and report her to the nearest teacher I can find!
And so that wraps up today’s scathing review! Thanks for stopping by, and sorry if there were fans of the show. I didn’t care for it.
However, I am looking forward to next week’s review because I’ll be looking into an anime that fits the category of being somewhat popular and has been on my watchlist for some time now.
Hopefully, it’ll be a good palate cleanser.
Till then, stay tuned for more, and enjoy the rest of your Sunday! Cause I sure plan to.
-Hanime on Anime
Hanime on Anime 
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