The Wallflower Vol. 1: My Fair Bishonen Review

            Sunako is a cute girl but two years ago, she confessed a crush and was met with ‘I hate ugly girls.’ Since then she’s become convinced that she’s ugly, hiding herself away in the dark and filled her life with the macabre. As a teenager, she’s already become a social recluse.

            Kyohei, Takenaga, Ranmaru and Yukinojo are four teenagers who are getting by on their looks, professional bishies as far as I can tell. They rent rooms out of a huge mansion and are quite happy with this. That is until the owner of the mansion (their landlord affectionately referred to as “Auntie”) tells them that her niece is coming to live in the mansion and she has a deal for them. If they can turn her niece into a proper lady while she’s off scouring the world for her one true love, all four of them get their living expenses paid for life. If they fail, their current rent triples.

Good and the Bad

            Right away, the opening animation sets the audience up properly. The opening theme is a soft ballad but the animation itself will catch the attention of all audience members. With its strong mix of goth, macabre icons and bishie imagery, the animation does a great job of preparing the audience for exactly what they should be expecting… which would be comedy that plays up those cultural subsets with absolutely no apologies in the process.

            Despite the predictability, the comedy in this first volume absolutely works. Right after the first introduction between the boys and Sunako, audiences will see the boys head to a café and one of the first running gags of the series is laid out with the female staff members having typical bishie reactions. It’s weird since I saw this scene coming from a mile away but I just could not stop myself from laughing.

            Not all of the comedy in this series is predictable though and some of it is downright surprising. One of the most interesting comedic devices used throughout this first volume is the use of onomatopoeia. It’s really rare for a comedy to use this form of comedy so heavily and even more rare for a series to do it well. The secret that this series has discovered is that by using the sound gags as extra zingers instead of punch lines, they can be used freely and use them freely they do.

            A second running gag is also set up very quickly with each episode containing a bishie beauty tip. Each tip is inserted at random places within the episodes and has the boys giving tips on makeup, beauty and manners. This came across as a really nice touch but the series would have been much better served to have the tips placed at a static point in each episode. Every single one of the tips could easily have been written to serve as a great end piece for each episode or even a solid introduction. It’s a small complaint really since these tip scenes don’t really interrupt the pacing of the series, it’s just annoying to really be into an episode or scene and have it interrupted by one of these segments.

            The cast of characters here is what really makes this series work the best. The boys and Sunako are really strong characters to support the episodes on. While they aren’t exactly the deepest characters you’ll ever come across and their development is very slow, they are written in a way that really helps the jokes get over with the audience. It’s almost embarrassing to admit but after I got through the first episode and started heading into the second, the idea of supporting and secondary characters hadn’t even entered my mind and actually caught me off guard when I remembered that new characters still needed to be introduced.

            Besides the Japanese track, the English track manages to get some great jokes in itself. ADF Director Matt Greenfield is credited as the ADR writer for these first five episodes and some of the inside jokes used really shows this. Late in the volume, audience members will hear Kyohei asked a question by one of the other bishies and replies “I can neither confirm nor deny.” Cute. While the joke will go over the head of many audience members who don’t follow anime news regularly, the ones that do get it will have to smirk at that one.

Music

            Attacking from all fronts, the series also dips into the field of musical gags including the playing of soft choral music whenever Kyohei enters the room to have a talk with Sunako. The joke was predictable but audience members will still get a laugh from it just due to some great reaction shots from Sunako.

             The audio quality on the volume remains strong throughout with no real issues coming up that could be noticed. 

Dub vs. Sub

            Starting with the dub cast, the primary cast has yet to show any sort of weak links within their performances. Chris Patton (Ranmaru), Greg Ayres (Yuki), Josh Grelle (Kyohei) and Vic Mignogna (Takenaga) really throw themselves into these roles and the chemistry between the four is evident right away. While they fall prey to some of the forced dialogue (such as the above mentioned introduction scene), all four of these actors do a great job with the roles. Greg Ayres especially gets to throw myself into another whiny role with Yuki and does it with a flair that no one else at ADV could’ve managed.

            Hannah Alcorn as Sunako will take some getting used to for audience members. All throughout the first couple of episodes, its obvious that she has trouble with finding the character but it takes less than half the volume for her to slip quietly and comfortably into the role at which point she absolutely owns it.

Extras

            Clean animations and the original on air opening animation for episodes 1-13. With 26 episodes though, I can only hope that there are going to be plenty of other extras along the way.

Overall

            With this opening volume, the series really sets up well. While the audience has a solid idea of where this series is ultimately trying to go, the road that they have chosen to get to that destination is a bit less clear. The cast and characters are strong though and the gags really find a way to get across well enough to make for some very happy viewing. If you’re a fan of comedic anime, the first episodes of this series are something to go out of your way to see.