Aho Girl – 12 (Fin)

The final episode of Aho Girl falls on the tenth anniversary of A-kun and Yoshiko meeting when she and her mom moved in next door. Yoshiko sought a playmate, and it was derision at first sight for A-kun, a stoic, studious five-year-old. She treats every attempt to avoid or get away from her as a game, and never wants to stop playing. When she gives him a big long kiss, he uppercuts her into the sky for the first time.

Realizing the key to keeping Yoshiko away is physical superiority, A-kun begins rigorous training, Rocky-style. Alas, he ends up training too hard and passes out. He wakes up with Yoshiko on top of him, she stayed by his side for an entire day while he was out with a cold. He almost allows that she’s “not that bad” until his mom tells him she was kissing him the whole time. To add insult to injury, his punches can’t even faze her!

If fighting her doesn’t work, A-kun considers other options; after all, he can’t let this go on, lest he end up marrying Yoshiko and having idiot kids with her. So he turns into a demented pervert and chases her around, flipping her skirt, until she cries and he feels guilty for going to far. But even here Yoshiko manages to get the wrong idea, and apologizes for making A-kun “hold back”, removing her panties and putting them on his face.

Ten years later, she’s wearing those same panties (which don’t fit her anymore at all), still trying to play with A-kun when all he wasnts is peace and quiet; and after all these years he still wants to kill her. But if he’s honest, isn’t he glad there’s someone in his life to make things interesting? No. He hates her guts. But does he? Yes.

Aho Girl – 11

This week Yoshiko intercepts Ruri lamenting another perfect “0”, and suggests that maybe studying and academics just aren’t in the cards for her…without suggesting what she should do instead. This leads Ruri to attempt to do a great many things—cooking, cleaning, riding a bike—and Ruri is terrible at all of them, which puts her into a state of depression no 11-year-old should have to deal with.

The next segment is one of the best in Aho Girl’s eclectic repertoire; when Ryuuichi helps Yoshiko try to find one of the last special banana frappuccino drinks in town, he is beaten up by toughs from “Dick High”. More importantly, they disrespect the bananas, which flips a switch in Yoshiko’s head from “Aho Girl” to “Badass One-Girl Wrecking Crew”. And every tough she defeats gets a banana in the kisser.

The final segment follows Dog when he gets loose from his chain. While trying to deliver a flower to Sayaka’s dog Pomi, he has to rescue a boy from the river, another boy from a car, and beat up some armed bank robbers, before finally giving the flower to a scared girl to brighter her spirits. Good Dog! Good Aho Girl, too…

Aho Girl – 10

First up, Eimura again demonstrates that she’s the Worst Gal Ever by the fact she hasn’t had her ears pierced yet, and makes a tremendously dramatic meal over the fact that she’s about to.

Enter our Aho Girl, who at first has no idea why Eimura wants to pierce her ears, then lays out in great detail the very worst-case scenario, before offering her hands to steady Eimura’s. She manages to pierce one ear…I think? But Eimura decides to postpone the piercing of the other one indefinitely.

The next segment is Aho Girl in top form, as Yoshiko takes Dog for a ride and ends up in a manga-style race on a mountain road with a super-competitive motorcyclist who ends up lost in their dust. His serious commentary of the race is hilarious and the art is fantastic in its starkness and illusion of motion.

Yoshiko has both feet on the ground, in a sandbox, in the next segment, where she bothers the little kids again, this time by playing dolls with them. Yoshiko betrays her older years by making things between “Michael” and “Micca” get way too dark and real, but the girl runs with it and has Michael come back to life and live happily ever after, further baffling the lads.

Finally, Fuuki tries to get closer to A-kun by befriending his lil’ sister Ruri, who is upset over having scored another zero on a test (further indicating Yoshiko’s influence on her). Fuuki is thwarted by Yoshiko’s mom Yoshie, who obviously has the inside track, having known Ruri and A-kun for years.

Before long, Ruri completely fades away in the midst of an increasingly heated battle between Yoshie and Fuuki, in which Yoshie unhooks Fuuki’s bra, then steals her panties to show Ruri that she’s a pervert; when Fuuki tries and fails to steal Yoshie’s panties, she ends up stealing Ruri’s, so quickly neither Ruri nor Yoshie noticed, and puts them on herself before Yoshie can expose her to Ruri.

It’s a very, er, wrong sequence, but in the end, Yoshie is humbled and decides she needs more “training”, giving their ridiculous exchange the air of a sincere martial arts duel. I sincerely hope another round is in the cards!

Aho Girl – 09

When Yoshiko volunteers to chair the cultural festival, A-kun is ready to let her fail so she can “get a sense of her own idiocy”, which he believes is more productive than letting Eimura (the gal) live out her pure festival dream of “coming together as one, doing all sorts of stuff, make it all awesome, and have a party after”. A-kun and Eimura verbally spar, with A-kun accidentally making Eimura cry…but everything she wanted to happen ends up coming to pass this week.

…Just not in the way she expected. Yoshiko convinces Eimura and her two gal friends to spend the night at school, but while they intend to work on the maid cafe prep, Yoshiko wants to explore the school (like the boy’s room urinals) and play video games until dawn, which is what happens. But rather than protest, Eimura is on board with all of it, and while they don’t get a lot of work done (or sleep), she does have a ton of fun.

The day of the cultural festival, Yoshiko spots Fuuki rejecting a boy, and immediately becomes his advocate. When she tells Fuuki to imagine how she’d feel if A-kun rejected her (a hilariously-portrayed what-if), Fuuki admits she’d at least want a parting kiss as a memory.

Yoshiko tells her girls want kisses but guys want a boob grab to “break the chain of sorrow”…and Fuuki almost allows it, not wanting karma to bite her back. Fortunately, A-kun walks by and the boob grab is thwarted, but the rejected guy does end up with Fuuki’s upskirt in his face…when she delivers a devastating surprise attack in her panic.

The festival wraps off-camera (good!) and we go straight to the party Eimura foresaw. It’s meant to be a peace summit organized by Sayaka so A-kun and Eimura can bury the hatchet, but they end up lobbing insults across the table.

Suddenly Sayaka slams her hand on the table and yells, seemingly having lost her temper…but it’s revealed their order got messed up and she inhaled beer fumes, making her an unreasonable, quick-to-tears drunk who nonetheless has a good point about A-kun and Eimura needing to knock it off.

Aho Girl – 08

Yoshiko continues to methodically tear down the Gals’ rep by digging into their love lives…or lack thereof. Turns out the only one with a “boyfriend” has neither kissed, held hands, or even told him she likes him. Yoshiko is ruthless in her mockery of the surprisingly pure gal, but does get her to express her feelings to the guy.

Yoshiko then inserts herself in the middle of the little kids’ field trip snack-shopping mission, where she dissuades them from buying chips or chocolate lest they get crushed or melt. She also points out the high-priced deluxe Pocky that must not be purchased no matter what…only for Nozomi to not only buy it (with all her money) but is nice enough to share with everyone.

Fuuki Iinchou has to be taken to the roof by Sayaka to try to get her to stop acting so crazy around A-kun, but Fuuki, blinded by love, has no idea how erratically or insanely she’s behaving. When Sayaka tells her the truth, Fuuki is so devastated Sayaka has to take it all back as joking around. This is beyond Sayaka’s ability to deal with alone, if at all.

Lastly, Yoshiko and Dog meet Sayaka’s dog, Pomi the Pomeranian. At first Yoshiko thinks she’s ludicrously tiny and weak, until it’s Dog cowering in fear behind her skirt. Yoshiko misreads their romantic interactions for aggression, but Dog is ultimately too embarrassed and runs off, with Yoshiko riding him, of course.

Aho Girl – 07

Yoshiko’s idiocy envelops her 28-year-old love-starved sensei, her huge white dog, and the class gal and her two vice-gals. First up, sensei, who Yoshiko cheers up by disguising herself as a dude named “Yoshio” and throwing out all the cliched lines in the book at her. “Yoshio” is rather scarily good at seducing a woman (at least one as desperate as sensei), but for obvious reasons their “romance” can only go so far.

Next up, Dog…and A-kun’s continued frustration he doesn’t have a proper name. Yoshiko is clearly fine with “Dog”, but A-kun thinks it should be “George”, so they both try—far too hard—to gain the dog’s favor, and he runs off in exasperation. Once both of them decide to put the naming conflict aside for the good of the dog, Yoshiko pushes a bit too far…and receives a devastating uppercut for her trouble.

Finally, the class Gals. They tried to avoid Yoshiko, but when they said they were going to “play around” she thought in the playground sense, first with tag and then hide-and-seek. The Gals trick her by making her hide and then ditching her, but she stays hidden for three days and nights without food, or water. They finally go looking for her out of guilt, and find her in a drainage channel, filthy and hungry but immediately up for another game. This girl is otherworldly.

I liked the three longer segments followed by a super-short fourth (in which A-kun insults his sister again by giving her a book on how to survive without a degree and saying “it’s okay to give up,” convinced she’s let too much of Yoshiko rub off on her. This arrangement allowed the Yoshio and Gal segments to run a little longer, to their benefit.

Aho Girl – 06

Aho Girl was just ‘okay’ this week, as it relied more heavily on boobs-and-dick-style comedy as the gang goes on a beach/hot spring vacation. Fuuki tries a bit too hard to get A-kun to look at her boobs, and is punished by Yoshiko by being buried in the sand and given a sand schlong.

Later, Yoshiko gets to talking about A-kun’s tiny weewee when they used to bathe together as little kids, but when Fuuki tells her he’s probably not that way anymore due to puberty, it only makes Yoshiko want to peek at A-kun even more. She gets a mace-like weapon to the face for her trouble.

The strangest skit involves A-kun on his own with Yoshiko’s dog while she’s away, and he finds that not only can the dog understand what he’s saying, he also loves his favorite movie. Yoshiko accuses A-kun of “having an affair” with a dog, but he won’t forget how much more pleasant communicating with the dog was than with Yoshiko.

Things are wrapped up with a festival in which the Neighborhood Association attempts to stop Yoshiko from ruining their Bon Dance. However, her sexy Brazilian Carnival get-up lowers their guards, and before they know it, they’re her backup dancers.

Aho Girl – 05

Summer Vacation is here. A-kun wants to study. Yoshiko wants to play. For once, I’m on her side (wait…when am I ever not?). Ruri has recovered from last week’s unintentional assault. Yoshiko invites her to go see a new magical girl anime movie. A-kun tells her that stuff’s for kids, and Ruri starts to cry…so A-kun agrees they’ll all go to the movies.

BIG mistake. Neither Yoshiko nor Ruri can keep it down, making such a disturbance A-kun has to smack them both and carry them out with apologies to the rest of the audience. Though I must say, Yoshiko breaking out of her tape binds, magical girl transformation-style, was pretty nifty.

Next, Yoshiko wants to go to the beach. She’s not alone; Sayaka thinks it’ll be fun times as well. Fuuki Iinchou and Ryuuichi happen to be in the neighborhood (stalking A-kun in various ways) so they want in as well. Suddenly A-kun is all alone on an island of people who don’t want to go to the beach.

While everyone is shopping for swimsuits (don’t they own any?) he mentions he won’t be joining them on the trip. Then Sayaka pulls out all the stops to guilt trip A-kun into coming along, by calling him a weirdo who draws other weirdos, like Yoshiko and Ryuuichi and Fuuki Iinchou…and yes, even Sayaka. But she bets—correctly—that even if she is a weirdo, A-kun will still be her friend.

The morning of the trip arrives, and Fuuki ends up facing off against Yoshiko’s mom, who smells an “A-kun-stealing homewrecker” and a “sow”. Neither Fuuki nor Ryuuichi are a match for Yoshiko’s mom’s extensive cat fight experience…but A-kun is, and warns her to knock off the violent behavior and leave them in peace.

She does, but not before slipping A-kun her still-warm bra (for some reason) before scampering off while laughing maniacally. I think I’m realizing where Yoshiko got a lot of her brash theatricality…

Aho Girl – 04

Beneath the twin tails and great skin of Hanabatake Yoshiko lurks an eldritch abomination of idiocy, and woe betide the poor doomed souls all who enter her orbit, for they are irrevocably corrupted (except for A-kun, who merely has to endure her).

Among the condemned is Nozomi, whom the boys try in vain to keep from Yoshiko’s dumb clutches at a department store hero show. While horrendously idiotic, Yoshiko can appear or sound cool in isolated moments, so Nozomi’s descent continues.

Yoshiko’s corrosive idiocy also rubs off on a teacher at school who is simply trying to get her to understand the fundamentals of reading comprehension. But because, like all female educators in anime, their teacher is 28 and single, Yoshiko instinctively pulls on that thread of shame and loneliness, until by the end the teacher doubts everything she’s ever known…and begs A-kun of all people to “teach her about love.”

On the eve of A-kun’s birthday, Yoshiko plans to sneak into his room in the night to “find out what he wants.” She drags an unwilling Sayaka along, and the Fuuki Iinchou accompanies them because she wants a picture of A-kun sleeping.

The resulting antics between Yoshiko and Iinchou result in an ornery Ruri getting knocked out by an errant blow by Iinchou meant for Yoshiko, and everyone gets in trouble…not with A-kun, but with Sayaka, who wonder what the heck everyone is thinking.

There’s also a brief thread in which Kurosaki (Bleach reference?) repeatedly describes himself as one of “Sis’s soldiers”, before eventually becoming A-kun’s “tool”/”dog”…when all he wanted to be was his friend. The connecting thread with all of these stories? No good can come of associating with the likes of Yoshiko.

Aho Girl – 03

It’s a jam-packed Aho Girl with another not one or two or three but four separate stories, starting with a different opening in which the Disciplinary Committee President (DCP) slowly pans into the shot from the right leering at A-kun, until Yoshiko slowly pans in from the left.

From there, Yoshiko’s mom meets Sayaka, and is immediately suspicious she’ll steal A-kun from her daughter (and by extension, her). Thus she uses two pairs of handcuffs (she normally uses on her husband) and tries to get Sayaka to show them her panties, which will determine what kind of girl she is.

When A-kun threatens violence on Yoshiko and her mom, Sayaka surrenders, and when she finally reveals her panties to the women, they’re so white and pure Mom tells A-kun he’s free to be friends with her: she’s no threat.

Part Deux is another “kids in the playground” segment, with Yoshiko wanting to play and the kids preferring if she just studies, since she needs to get a job at some point. I will never tire of their mature, pragmatic banter.

Then a big white dog shows up—a huge white dog—and Yoshiko protects the little ‘uns…by attempting to ride him. There’s a poetry to her being dragged across the dirt telling the jaded kids to “hold fast to their dreams” as she holds fast to the dog, eventually ending up holding him in the air with her legs.

It’s a stray dog, so naturally Yoshiko intends to keep him, so she can keep riding him, and to the kids’ surprise, she seems to have trained him. The girl even calls Yoshiko “kinda amazing”, which immediately concerns her friends.

Following the dog rodeo, Yoshiko suddenly sounds a lot more bright and sophisticated when talking about her one true love of bananas. Her interest piqued by a bold upstart domestic banana farmer, Satou-san, and the taste is so good she bowls’ over backwards, revealing her panties once more.

The sophistocation quickly fades away when she proposes to run to Satou’s farm to meet him, and Sayaka must tag along…to the tune of 100km. Stopping to buy a drink, Sayaka very unwisely sends Yoshiko into a store that sells far more than just drinks, and the phrase “a fool and her money are soon parted” is elegantly yet devastatingly illustrated. The ugly, dull, expensive, yet not not adorable town mascots of “Middle of Nowhere” were a nice touch.

They finally reach the farm, and Yoshiko draws Satou into a perhaps not appropriate hug for an old man who is a complete stranger. Still, Yoshiko seems convinced she knows the man’s soul intimately after tasting his exquisite banana (that sounds wrong but it’s factually accurate). Then it’s up to Sayaka to get on all fours and beg for train fare home. I can’t blame her for not wanting to sprint another 100km home.

In Numero Quatro things get a little frisky and a little dark, as Yoshiko, seeing A-kun is down from not scoring a full 100 on any of his tests (say what you will about her, she’s good at nice round zeros), and decides to cheer him up…the same way her mom cheers her dad up some nights. Oh dear…

Yoshiko is truly an idiot, but she pays attention when she wants to, and was clearly taking very precise visual notes, judging from the attention to detail in which she handcuffs A-kun, talks to him like he’s a baby with an insufferably cutesy tone while stripping. A-kun is not, for a single moment, turned on by the display, and indeed, looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. I’m sure Yoshiko’s mom would be sad to see him that way!

His sister, on the other hand, manages to walk in just after he’d gotten on his feet and delivered a tremendous knock-out drop kick to Yoshiko, and in the very moment he’s lifting her skirt with his teeth to fetch the key from her panties. Poor Ruri! On the one hand, she shouldn’t have to see that. On the other, well…Yoshiko really shouldn’t have to ever see her parents’ foreplay.

Aho Girl – 02

This week Aho Girl continued to deliver strong comedy bang for the buck, relying on a single, central premise (Yoshiko is an idiot) but applying that idiocy in a diverse array of unexpected ways.

First Yoshiko wanders off and plays with children, who think she’s cool until A-kun arrives to burst their bubble. It’s an act where Yoshiko exhibits her rare glimmers of brilliance (both in building a boss sand castle and lamenting that the kids’ hopes were already “lost and broken by modern society”, her failed swing attack makes deft use of both slapstick and observational comedy.

In another little dig at modern society, Yoshiko gradually convinces a rough-looking delinquent to stop pawing Sayaka and play with her, a “fellow idiot” instead, believing she sees him for what he really is: a sensitive, misunderstood young man just trying to make it in the world.

Turns out A-kun’s sister Ruri is also capable of scoring zeros on tests, but not for lack of studying, for which his high-scoring brother can’t hide his shame, and leads Ruri to tell him she hates him and latch onto Sayaka instead, who worries about the girl’s future.

Finally, A-kun has an admirer, and it’s the disciplinary committee president, who despite her button-down, strict manner, is concealing all manner of lewd and lascivious thoughts, especially when A-kun invites her (quite innocently) to search him (for contraband), which she takes to mean violate her regulations. She ends up banging her head on a locker trying to jump him, but promises “it isn’t over”.

Aho Girl – 01 (First Impressions)

Aho Girl or “Clueless Girl” is about all of the ways Hanabatake Yoshiko is an idiot, as seen from the perspective of her neighbor and long-suffering caretaker Akutsu Akuru. In under thirteen minutes of airtime, A-kun and others call her an idiot thirteen times and he assaults her a half-dozen more as punishment for being so idiotic.

If that sounds really one-note, it’s because it is. However this double act in which A-kun is the straight and Yoshiko is the foil sort of succeeds for two reasons: despite her idiocy Yoshiko has a great deal of performative range (thanks to her seiyu, a game Yuuki Aoi) and the bits and jokes are numerous and frequent, leaving scant time to stop and ask yourself why you’re watching.