Murai in Love – Episodes 1-3

Content Warning: student/teacher romance

What’s it about? When high school teacher Tanaka Ayano’s student Murai declares his love for her, she tries to shut him down by saying she could never fall for someone with long hair. The next day, Murai shows up not just shorn but bleached…and now he looks eerily like the ninja Hitotose, Tanaka’s all-time otome heartthrob.

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Pointing out all the ways Murai in Love falls on its face almost like picking on it. The material realities of the finished project feel crueler than any barbs I could sling at it. But then I noticed that the series composer’s micro-length resume includes both Back Street Girls and the many crimes against comedy committed during the Way of the Househusband adaptation and thought, “maybe just a little.”

Obviously the core premise will ward off a chunk of people all by itself. I can get behind the general fantasy of “awkward older person is pursued by Hot Young Thing who’s embarrassingly vocal about their feelings,” but it’s probably one the quickest to go sideways depending on the context. With a school setting and an older woman/younger man pairing, it’s hard not to think about the Letourneau of it all. Young men are far less likely to have their experiences taken seriously when they’re preyed upon, especially by an older woman. When it’s a student/teacher romance, there’s no getting around the power dynamics. They’re the point.

I suspect part of the reasoning behind making Murai a student is to soften his “won’t take no for an answer” intensity, since Tanaka wields the most authority as teacher and adult. And there are other stories making the younger party the pursuer can defuse some of the creep vibes. But when it comes to students I can’t help but read it as an unintentional victim-blaming. “He came on to ME,” and all that.

The first two episodes are an exercise in frustration. Rather than cut to the heart of the matter, Tanaka flails every time she’s approached by Murai and then runs away when the encounter becomes potentially charged. She’s meant to be awkwardly relatable, I think, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how contrived it felt, particularly since the story’s webcomic origins give it that particular “should’ve been a short” flavor of pacing. The visuals do it no favors either. Jokes that might have limped along for a bit are dead on arrival thanks to animation that’s herky-jerky in ways that rarely serve the punchline…when the show is moving at all. Most of the action falls into either panning across a screenshot or bouncing the models on invisible popsicle sticks; Murai’s two bros vacillate between being mildly annoying and intensely annoying; the voice acting is directed to be so broad that stone-cold legend Hikasa Yoko is made to sound strained and mechanical. It’s one four-panel style gag after another, with nothing to distract you if it fails to land.

The best bits center around the otome game Tanaka is obsessed with, and which Murai picks up in order to better understand his (fictional) rival. Tanaka’s fave is apparently the weird moon logic route that most people struggle to complete, but Murai manages to click instinctively with the responses to progress the route. And the third episode manages a genuine bit of effective conflict, as Murai finds that trying to embody his crush’s Best Boy makes him feel pretty lousy. Tanaka also, finally, draws a firm line in the sand: she’ll stop dismissing Murai’s feelings as serious, but she can’t entertain the idea of a relationship with one of her students. It’s a rather nicely landed beat, and I’d have respected if the story decided to take a pause there and move forward to “and then Murai was eerily contained only to immediately start acting deranged again on graduation day.”

Instead, the closing sketch is about Murai waffling about whether to invite Tanaka to the summer festival (and reuniting with a girl I presume will be there for romantic drama), while Tanaka catches herself fantasizing about what Murai would look like in festival wear (…no comment). Director Yamakawa Yoshiki is used to directing shows with limited resources, but the rough visuals do nothing to help a script that feels too disjointed to sell a sense of humanity that carries from one scene to the next. It’s an easy show to put on, but one that sits meekly in the corner even as it’s right in front of your eyes. If I tried to get up in arms about it, I’d fall asleep halfway through making the first protest sign. Wait for one of the more interesting Fall rom-coms to come along.