dohara - 2015-10-30 17:37:46

[Old review is old.]

On today’s episode of “Oh Anime, Why Do You Continue To Be As Uncomfortably Weird As Legally Possible?”, we have a supernatural high school romance ecchi show focusing on telekinetic saliva and possible aliens. That bit with the saliva seems to be the make or break factor when people decide to watch this anime or not. You can either take so much relationship building via drool (Never thought I’d type that sentence), or you can’t deal with the spit and flee to a different anime to watch. Or perhaps at that point you’ve had it with consistently weird shit and burn anything having to do with the medium. By now I assume you’re still considering the show at the least, so I might as well tell you what’s in store for you.

Mysterious Girlfriend X is about a high school boy named Akira Tsubaki, a horny little fucker as the show introduces him to us via inner monologuing about hypothetical first-time sex. A mysterious transfer student shows up in his class named Urabe Mikoto, and after sticking around after class to discover a pile of drool on her desk from an earlier nap, Akira impulsively licks a bit of it to see how it tastes. “Mmm…sweet”. Akira soon shows signs of sickness, to which Urabe shows up at his house and explains that he has suddenly become addicted to her drool. She gives him another sample to cure him and they decide to become boyfriend and girlfriend seeing as they can’t break the bond they share between saliva. Overtime they get to know eachother deeper, and find out how Urabe’s drool can transfer emotions and sensations to the receiver while a bunch of other students get tangled up in their slobbery mess. Still considering?

As I try to think of more synonyms for drool, let’s get some obvious stuff out of the way. In terms of high school romance with fanservice, the cliches pile on rather high in a short time. Growth between the couple is predictable, opportunities for lady objectification are rarely passed up, and the ploys for needless drama are unbearable at times. At first the show did start out with a bit of a charm to it. The innocent view of sex held by Akira at the beginning was in no way overwhelming or uncomfortable. The discovery of the logic behind telekinetic spittle was presented so simply that it was surprisingly easy to roll with it. Then elements added up, like other students tasting the drool and receiving feelings from the couple, and it became genuinely intriguing. But eventually it did have to go down that road of putting Akira in increasingly heavier sexual situations, introducing useless characters to drag out the plot that was getting old, all to end without a sense of closure. I appreciate the better aspects of bad writing, but when the endgame turns out to be a weak finale surrounded by ecchi and shallow dramatic devices, it feels as though the good stuff didn’t matter much. It would have been something else entirely if an ecchi comedy evolved to a more effective tone and interesting topics (looking at you, Sakurasou). But eventual unmoderated fanservice with an uncommitted close is a fairly weak finale.

I never saw the cast as people with a sense of depth, rather than a bunch of tools. Akira is a boring grey wall onto which the viewer projects himself. Urabe is the tsundere tease that always provides the convenient knowledge regarding plot elements and her attractive body to be subjected to a bunch of erotic imagery. Akira’s friend is the light comic relief, and his girlfriend exists only to create introspection and drama for Urabe by tasting her spit and outwardly expressing her conflicts. Akira’s sister and long forgotten crush are extremely lazy efforts to stretch the show with those predictable dramatic narratives. The story aspect is what retains interest in the beginning, since how far they go with relationship development from magical mysterious spit is actually pretty cool. Once it takes a backseat to watching dry personalities go through overused scenarios without many twists, telekinetic spittle suddenly becomes boring as hell when placed in the hands of dull people.

The character designs helped with that instance of charm at the beginning, creating what seems to be a mixture of styles from Osamu Tezuka and classic Ghibli. But by the time we see everyone competing for the guy’s attention in full nudity, suddenly those juvenile designs don’t fit at all. Character movement was consistently decent and surprisingly active at times, unlike most other run-of-the-mill throwaway school anime. Background work was also solid, though anime in general has come a long way in that department. I liked the touches of sci-fi movie posters in Akira’s room and the alien posters in Urabe’s. They never explicitly state she’s an E.T. or something, but the hints are obvious in the art and that’s always fun to pick up. While I can’t remember any times the visuals really wowed me, they never dipped drastically in quality either so I can’t knock it hard. Perhaps they could have made the nudity censoring a little less tacky, but then again, maybe you shouldn’t strip your leads and pan the camera all around their naughty bits.

I barely remember any of the background music apart from the odd polka ditty during the dreamland scenes and the annoying spastic drums whenever Urabe wields her wicked fast scissors. The voice actors provide an adequate read through, though by personal preference, Urabe’s calm and cool deliveries made her presence a bit more entertaining. The opening ain’t too great and the ending consists of slow pans of the female cast in sexy outfits with a boring song.

So does this show have more to offer than the usual examples of shallow ecchi romance? A few interesting tidbits and surprises make it much more passable, and considering the plot element of magical drool, that’s saying that the crew put more effort into this than the usual products. Should you bear the weight of the bad aspects to watch it for those elements? I’m gonna say no on this one. If it stuck with the initial innocent outlook on sexual stuff and worked with the premise enough to steer clear of recycled drama, I think this could have been a decent show, pure and simple. For what it is now, it falls pretty hard. I’d say skip over it’s remains, just make sure not to slip on that puddle by its mouth.

Mysterious Girlfriend X (2012):
3.4/10

jamarcus09 - 2015-04-23 19:31:22

What did I even watch? This was awful. A threadbare plot tied solely around the act of a girl jamming her finger into a boy's mouth. How they made so many episodes of this is beyond my knowledge. What I will say is that the main girl is super cool. The concept of her character is fun and interesting, bordering on forceful and yandere. Her dominant nature is fun, and if they explored that part of her character more, the show would probably have more appeal. Not to mention that the anime is pretty solid and with good design.

But no. It's not about a dominant girl forcing herself onto a timid boy. It's not even about how the characters interrelate with a bizarre/magical girl's powers to form addictions in people. No, it's just about a girl making a boy suck on her spit. This is not worth your time unless you have absolutely nothing else to watch. 

delia.hand - 2015-04-12 21:36:47

this anime is too underrated. i honestly like this anime. 
if you've read the manga, it would be more normal to you, as you'd get more used to it. 

guy.lebsack - 2015-02-08 04:05:40

I commited a big mistake watching this while high.

buckridge.cordelia - 2015-01-07 03:19:44

A romcom that has absolutely no handholding, no kiss and absolutely no hope of every getting pasted second base.

What this series has going for it is, a bizarre concept with Drool, fantastic well written characters, breast fondling, panty shots along with jedi lightsaber scissors and a heroine that likes to get naked. 

probel - 2014-09-06 17:28:35

Made a video review of Naze No Kanajo X ((Mysterious Girlfriend X)) where i go into detail about what i thought of the story, characters Ect;

gkreiger - 2014-08-12 04:17:34

One word: drool. Two words: very romantic. Would at least try the first few episodes!

tlegros - 2014-08-07 14:17:20

Now this anime does have an off putting start that will get a lot of none Ecchi lovers hating it, but it does redeem itself it covers a lot of deep themes surrounding problems in relationships and really shines through with the dream state the character enters, there is also some homage's to pop culture such as the "Star Mars" poster which is quite obviously a nod to the Star Wars franchise now let's review some of the finer points one by one. 
                                                                                                                      First of all the characters the main characters are bland at first glance but do get some more thicker lining personality later on in the show, you'll probably begin hating most of the characters but they will grow on you over time.                                                                                                                                   The story is "ehhh" at times there are the obvious things to be clued in on this isn't a manga so I can't expect there to be just things that aren't obviously going to be integral to the story so I cannot expect more than that, but it's not terrible and if you like Ecchi and Romance you'll certainly enjoy this.                                                                                                                                        The animation is very good especially during the scissor scenes the flow and the way the characters move shows a lot of personality in the body language so defiantly good there.                                                                                                                                                                                              The sound is certainly a problem for me to review as I found myself loving it one moment and hating it the next the dream OST found it's way into my Playlist but the other music like the intro was just passable for me and I didn't feel compelled to watch through it.                                                                                                                                                                                               Overall though, I enjoyed this so much and if you can get past it you'll be smiling and crying till your tear ducts dry up.

myrtice.aufderhar - 2014-06-21 01:58:49

I watched this entire anime with my boyfriend today. Basically once u get past the amount of drool it's a really good anime with good characters but a weird plot if there even is one to begin with

gregory03 - 2013-05-19 08:56:18

Nazo no Kanojo X is your classic story of boy meets girl, boy licks girl's drool, boy and girl get together, etc.  (Wait, one of those is a bit different....) The show is based off of a manga by Ueshiba Riichi that is till running in "Afternoon", a seinen manga magazine.  It follows a boy named Tsubaki and his enigmatic girlfriend Urabe.  Tsubaki is your average Japanese schoolboy, while Urabe is your not so average transfer student.  The show chronicles the struggles of their young relationship and the unique aspect of such.

Drool swapping.  Yes, it is weird, yes, it is kind of gross.  But please don't let that scare you away from this wonderful show.  I know that me just saying this probably won't convince most of you to turn off the part of your brains that goes "ick", but please, hear me out.  Drool is kind of a strange fetish to use as a hook for an anime, and the drooly fanservice is indeed uncomfortable.  But most fanservice, at least for me, is a bit uncomfortable to watch.  Nazo no Kanojo X realizes this, and makes these scenes as uncomfortable as possible.  I believe that this actually reflects on the relationship between Tsubaki and Urabe.  Tsubaki knows that what Urabe and him are doing is not within the realm of a normal relationship (at least from my experience, but then again, I could be mistaken).   It's weird, it's uncomfortable, its unsanitary, but for some reason, I found myself slowly becoming accustomed to it as the series progressed. 

The art style of this anime is decidedly retro.  It reminds me of a late 80s anime, rather than one of the 90's which people compare it to, mostly because of the way reflections are done on the hair of the characters.  Originally, I thought that I would be annoyed by the retro art style, but I didn't mind it at all.  What really blew me away were the dream sequences.  With creative and visually pleasing backgrounds, as well as fluid animation of the characters, these were the high point visually of the show for me.  The only caveat I have is the use of some CG graphics used in one of the dream scenes, which I found to be jarring and, quite honestly, poorly done.  As a whole though, the show's animation was quite stellar, even more so considering the budget they had.  It just goes to show that you don't need to pump obscene amounts of money into your show's animation for it to look good (I'm looking at you, KyoAni)

The BGM in this show was actually quite good.  With hauntingly beautiful tones, they set the mood for several important scenes perfectly, without getting repetitive over time.   The opening and ending themes were, in my opinion, average.  They didn't stand out in my mind, but were unobtrusive and enjoyable to listen to.  The voice acting was done alright, with a superb offering from Urabe's VA Yoshitani Ayako.  Her voicing was beautiful and really captured the different facets of Urabe's character.  Yoshitani is actually primarily an actress, and her work in Nazo no Kanojo X is her first anime role.  I enjoyed her role so much that I watched some of her live action works, and she is superb in those as well, but I'm getting off topic here.

Overall, Nazo no Kanojo X is a pretty great anime, which I feel should be enjoyed by everyone.  However, I understand that not all will be able to get over the DROOL, which is understandable.  If anything, it that is a failure on the part of the show, not the viewer.  Taking this into mind, I have lowered my rating for the anime accordingly.