Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

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Friends, I may have met my match today.

I pride myself on being able to find something, if not necessarily substantial, at least evocative to say about every anime I cover. That streak, which has in my own opinion continued uninterrupted for the two years I’ve piloted this blog, may well come to an end today. Writing about Aharen-san wa Hakarenai, an absolutely narcotic new offering from Felix Film, feels like trying to draw blood from a stone. (The title means something like “Aharen-san is Unfathomable”, but in a rarity for a modern TV anime, it has no official English title, and is being released in the EN market under a romanization of its Japanese name. This may be the most interesting thing about it.)

The premise could not be simpler. Two new high school students, the tall boy Raidou Matsuboshi (Takuma Terashima), and the diminutive girl Reina Aharen (Inori Minase), are chronically shy, and end up seated next to each other in their classroom.

At one point, Reina drops an eraser and Raidou picks it up. The two bond over this simple act of kindness and become fast friends.

Premises this simple can lead to great things. Last year, Komi Can’t Communicate did a lot with a similar idea (down to the fact that both Aharen and Komi are difficult for other people to hear). Nearly a decade ago, Tonari no Seki-kun took the same “desk neighbors” premise and ran it into a totally absurd direction, creating one of the more memorable surreal shortform comedy anime ever made. In the case of Aharen-san, though, I could not only tell you that it doesn’t do anything great with its premise, it doesn’t really do anything with its premise at all. Calling a slice of life anime “boring” is a little like calling ambient music such, but even for iyashikei–that subgenre sometimes known as Ambient TV–this is utterly torpid. Almost nothing of note happens over the course of the first episode’s 22 minutes. There are a few slow-rolled gags dolloped throughout the whole thing, but very little else. Visually, it seems to adapt the look of the manga basically 1 to 1. Contributing to the soft-focus ambiance, everything feels very placid and understated, even the gags. There is plenty of softness here, but only occasionally any actual warmth. This is the Pure Moods of school life anime. (And honestly, I like Pure Moods a lot more.)

Lest it seem like I’m trying to trash the series, I can at least understand the appeal. Aharen-san fills a role akin to lo-fi beats to relax to. It presents an all-consuming nonspecific fuzziness that, if you allowed it to, could conceivably, provide an escape from the cares of the real world. For me, I mostly found it vaguely grating. I will concede that I did chuckle at two of the episode’s few true jokes; Aharen misinterpreting something Raidou said in the form of repeatedly headbutting into him from a distance, and whatever Raidou is doing here.

Other than that, I really can’t find much to say–to praise or to criticize–about this series at all. The post-credits sequence does tease a new character for next week, so maybe that’ll shake the show up somewhat. Until then, though, the most interesting things about Aharen-san are its OP and ED. This one is just not for me.

The Takeaway: If you’re looking for something to put you to sleep, this might help. Otherwise? Unless you have a monstrously high tolerance for pure, uncut cotton, I would probably give this one a skip.

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