The first Winter 2018 to find my eyes is Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san, the latest in an inexhaustible succession of 4koma strip adaptations that follow the formula “[MC]-kun/san is [Characteristic].”[Tanaka]-kun is [listless]. [Morita]-san is [taciturn].
In this case, the beautiful transfer student [Koizumi]-san [loves ramen noodles]. This anime is an exploration of its title—no more, no less—and at least at first, it’s not from Koizumi’s POV, but that of her classmate Oosawa Yuu.
Yuu (Sakura Ayane) is immediately smitten by the aloof, doll-like Koizumi-san (Taketatsu Ayana), perhaps wanting something quieter in a cute class idol than her twin-tailed friend Misa (Kito Akari). Indeed, the more Koizumi ignores and shoots her down, the more Yuu likes her.
Yuu is one of those indefatigable optimists who never stays down more than a few moments after facing rejection or failure, which happens numerous times (this anime understandably has the rhythm of a 4-koma, and Yuu snapping out of her momentary funks forms the “fourth panel” of each segment.
Yuu finds the only way to talk with Koizumi is to voice her ignorance of all things ramen. Because Koizumi is a hardcore ramen enthusiast (otaku?), she doesn’t hesitate to lay some of her encyclopedic knowledge of ramen on Yuu (and us), and Yuu is mostly content with this for now, because a cute girl is talking to her in a cute voice, and the blissful face she makes upon completing a bowl is well worth the indifferent scorn Koizumi doles out.
However, Yuu seems determined not just to become proper friends with Koizumi (using their shared love of ramen as an in, as unbalanced as their enthusiasm for it might be), but make her the fourth member of their circle of friends, thus completing the blue/red/green/yellow hair quadrifecta.
I suspect this will be a fairly static slice-of-life involving Yuu and the others enjoying ramen together and learning more about why it’s so good, with perhaps some gradual progress in opening Koizumi’s shell. At the moment, Koizumi doesn’t seem interested in making friends in the least, but due to her love of ramen, she’s not going to stop anyone from developing some ramen love of their own.
Light, crisp, pastel-y, and inoffensive enough (unless you loathe ramen slurping, not as culturally appropriate in America, though of late people tend to do as the Romans, or in this case, Japanese do), RDK is a watchable enough one-trick time-spender…as well as a mild appetite inducer. But with a lot more shows coming in, I probably won’t be reviewing it going forward.
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