Tomo-chan is a Girl

 Tomo-chan is a Girl! (トモちゃんは女の子！) is a 13 episode romantic comedy based on the manga of the same name by Yanagida Fumita. The series originally aired during the Winter of 2023.

    Aizawa Tomo is a girl who takes after her father, large and imposing with incredible strength.  She speaks her mind, rushes into any challenge and generally doesn't let anything deter her.  That is until she starts to realize she has developed romantic feelings for her childhood friend Kubota Junichiro.  The two have spent their entire lives together trying to outdo the other, with Tomo usually coming out on top, regardless of how physically demanding the challenge is.  This has lead to her current problems.  She mustered up the courage to admit to him that she had deeper feelings for him and he blew her off, treating him like one of the guys.  Tomo, who has never considered getting in touch with her feminine side is faced with the challenge of making the boy she loves see her as the woman she is growing into.

    With the help of her other friend, Gundou Misuzu, Tomo struggles with getting in touch with her feminine side, uncomfortable with forcing herself to act in ways shes not familiar with.  Misunderstanding between Tomo and Jun, compounded by the diabolical interference from Misuzu make the situation more difficult than it needs to be.  Unknown to her, Jun has feelings for Tomo and tried to play it cool when she confessed to him out of fear for ruining what they have had since they were little.  He's quick to attack anyone he feels is encroaching on her, such as the captain of the men's karate team, who has his a fiance in the form of ditzy British girl, Carol Olston.  Carol herself, thinks Tomo is trying to take her man and tries to fight her....quickly realizing its pointless and instead becomes friends with all three of them.  What will it take for the two brutes to realize they share the same end goal in their lives?

   This series has way more heart that a short synopsis could ever hint to.  On the surface the idea of a typical childhood friends into romantic partners seems boring.  Then splashing in the trope of the girl being more of a man than the boy makes it seem like a cheap parlor trick.  At first that's all the story seems to have and hits you right away with a lot of well timed humor that draws you in.  As the story continues, buoyed by the the lovable characters and the great physical comedy the depth of it begins to unfold.  In the back half of the series a lot of time is spent digging into the characters history with each other and their internal struggles.  There is a lot of heart in this story that could have been a series of cheap gags and groan inducing situational comedy.

    I was caught off guard with how much I feel in love with this story and its characters.  The story does a really good job of keeping on task without forcibly delaying the resolution that everyone expects.  The comedy is fantastic and punches pretty hard between both the English and Japanese versions.  Both bring their own take on the situations which each delivery quite well.  The story effortlessly swings from ridiculous to sincere to enhance the quality of whats being told.  I really need to pick up the manga for this, even though the ending of the anime resolves in a way that you are not wanting of more.  The best I can say is this story had a lot of heart and was time well spent.  A damn fine example of how a romantic comedy can be put together and executed.

The dub and sub versions are both available on Crunchyroll.