Mysterious Disappearances – Episode 1

Content Warning: Intense fanservice, arguable sexualization of children

What’s it about? Sumireko is a late twenty-something woman struggling with a dead end job and a creative block that has destroyed her self-esteem. Working at a bookstore with a horny younger coworker named Adashino, she spends her days attempting to write a novel that will live up to the award winner she wrote as a teenager. Interrupting this miasma, however, a mysterious book appears at her workplace that seems to have magic powers. What will she do with it?

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First of all: I love the protagonist of this show. She gives very “burned out former gifted kid” energy; after work, she lays around her apartment facedown on beanbag chairs and whines about her existential crises. She has way too many books, stacked in piles everywhere. She has huge bushy eyebrows. I relate to her. She is me. 

She also has absolutely massive tits.

I’m afraid we have to talk about the male gaze.

We are introduced to our protagonist ass first, and the show never stops reminding us of her sexuality, her objectified body, and her sexual precarity in every way it possibly can. The show constantly pans up from her boobs to her face, from her ass to her face. This protagonist is reduced over and over again to her body, and even more than that, her virginity, which is the source of her powers.

This show fetishizes Sumireko’s virginity. The big reveal of the episode, after all, is that the magic of the spellbook is contingent on her being an above 28 year old virgin. While this is not great, it is made much worse by the constant fanservice. Put together, they seem to be cueing the (implied male) viewer to ask: “why is somebody so HOT a virgin?! Is she just that socially inept?” (It’s quite ironic for the show to be fetishizing her virginity, given that much of the drama of the episode is about how fetishizing childhood is actively harmful!)

Speaking of social ineptitude, the dynamic between Sumireko and her coworker Adashino is challenging to read towards the beginning. They have an easygoing and slightly flirty relationship, where Adashino makes fun of Sumireko’s slight social awkwardness and age and Sumireko tells him to metaphorically jump off a cliff. (For the purposes of this review, I am assuming Adashino is not a child, given his statement midway through the episode that he is far too old to be called a “youngster.” It is worth noting, however, that he looks extremely young–which colors many of their interactions as feeling like it catering to a particular brand of age-gap romance, while also giving them plausible deniability.)

I found their dynamic harmless at first, but it started to feel more and more gross as the show went on, especially as Adashino started to feel more creepy and take over the narrative. His comments that previously felt playful quickly turned vaguely sexually threatening–whether it’s him looking at her bra in her empty apartment and thinking “I wish I could have come here under better circumstances,” him asking her “decency? Was that something I had?” as she asks him for something to cover herself up, or when he exclaimed “this curiosity has proven your chastity” to her at the big reveal. I die.

What’s honestly more concerning is that there’s signs that he will displace Sumireko as the true protagonist of the show, given that much of the episode was spent with him explaining the magic to her while she was suffering. I would not want to see a character I relate to so hard be reduced to a fanservicey receptacle for horny protagonist-kun’s extended monologues. Much of the episode, to be honest, felt as though it was robbing Sumireko of her agency, literally reducing her to a suffering little girl who needs her situation explained to her—so much that when she attempted to steal the book back, even though I knew it would likely actively harm her, I cheered. Maybe she will be able to reclaim a bit of her agency!!! But then, of course, she has to be narratively punished, and her intentions must be revealed to be foolish. Womp womp.

If anything, much of the experience of watching the show felt like a battle with the writing, where I kept praying the writer would not make a bad choice. Please, don’t sexualize her when she’s a child crying tears of blood! Please don’t let Adashino take advantage of her when she’s suffering! Please do not let this turn into a Monogatari-like where the horny protagonist saves a bunch of girls!

I am probably going to keep watching, because I want to see what happens with Sumireko. She’s arguably worth watching this show for, as the exact kind of gremlin girl that I love to see. If she reclaims her position as protagonist on equal footing, and ideally greater footing, than Adashino, then I think this show could have legs. If the male gaze continues to dominate this show completely, I don’t think I could recommend it to a feminist-minded audience.