Jitenshya-san no Takahashi-kun

The female lead (Tomoka) is a wimpy and easily-put-into-uncomfortable-situations office lady, due to her deeply-seated lack of confidence. And her love prospect (Ryohei) is the REALLY intense and straight-forward "yankee", who is not subtle and very overprotective in a cliché manner. Still, you understand he is caring and the kind of reassuring companion she needs to learn to move forward and stop suppressing her feelings.

Personally, I don't particularly like "forceful" and shallow romances that start out of thin air (plain encounter included).. or when neither lead have well-established personalities or backgrounds (just enough to get by). But both are reasonable at all times, and the drama never gets into "annoying situations" you'd want to skip over. And so, once it gets going and their relationship is established, it blooms rather nicely! Sadly, I find it hard to accept you have to churn through half the series to get to the good part.. and worse, it is this episode 5 where a lot of things are crammed in (while still good, life finally releasing a steam valve)! For me, it's hard to enjoy a series when the pacing is so unbalanced and quite slow (even more so for a series of eight 20-minute episodes). At first you wonder if he is psychologically taking advantage of someone that cannot speak up for herself.. Then, some milestones feel rushed and unearned.. only to speed up harshly. Oh, and this Manga adaptation even opted to leave a lot of "empty moments", when actors look at each other as if posing for a manga-panel while being awkwardly dead-silent (or those you'd use for trailers).. slowing it down even more.

I did really enjoy the production and the pretty interesting editing at times, it has good side characters (with very little scenes to shine) and a few memorable lines. Everything with the giant fluffy dog was great! And seeing the otherwise-gloomy Tomoka lit and open-up when feeling comfortable made me think the actress did an excellent job. Still, as a veteran content consumer, there's so much better stuff out there I would recommend over this.. so much so that I can't really praise it, and I seldomly enjoyed it. Give it a try, because it is not bad.. you just have to get there.