Senpai is an Otokonoko

 Senpai is an Otokonoko (先輩はおとこのこ) is a 12 episode slice of life romance based on the manga of the same name by Pom.  The series originally aired over the Summer of 2024.

    Aoi Saki has fallen for an upper classman, a beautiful girl named Hanaoka Makoto.  When she gathers up the courage to confess she learns that her senpai is actually a boy who dresses as a girl in school.  Saki falls even more in love with Makoto , entranced by the beautiful boy who looks even more beautiful as a girl.  Makoto's childhood friend, Taiga Ryuji, tries to protect him from the strange younger girl.  Ryuji fears that Saki is only trying to make fun of Makoto.  Saki recognizes that Ryuji harbors deeper feelings for his friend and starts to confront him about them.  Makoto is only able to live the way he wants to in secret from his mother.  He has always been attracted to feminine things but his mother has aggressively tried to force her son to be the way she wants him to be.  His father secretly supports Makoto to be the person he wants to be and helped him get to a school where the faculty at least was accepting of him presenting as a girl.

    Makoto tries and fight his desires when his mother begins to harass him again, only to have his passion restored through Saki's actions.  But she concedes that Makoto will not be able to love her and pushes Ryuji to be more honest with himself about his feelings.  Ryuji himself struggles with the feelings he has had for Makoto since they were young, uncertain if he is really gay or if it is just a deeper love for his best friend.  All three have internal struggles they are trying to fight alone; Makoto with his identity and the resistance from his mother and the world around him.  Ryuji and his conflicted feelings for Makoto.  Saki and her desire to have someone to love and to love her back given her father is absent from her life due to his work and her mother left them when she was little.  Will any of them be able to be honest and open with the other around them who care?

    This show was surprisingly way better than I would have expected.  Just based on the trailers and the first episode, it presented its self as a comedy series, with everything centering around Makoto being a cross dresser and the quirky girl trying to get him to love her.  In reality it is a deep and complex drama about the main characters and their realistic and relatable struggles.  Not just with normal adolescence, but with their very realistic problems with how the world views them and how they view themselves.  There is an amount of comedy which is scattered through out the series in tasteful ways.  All three characters are approachable, relatable and realistic in their portrayal.  Perhaps the most frustrating is Makoto's passive attitude.  Even though he continuously defies the expectations around him he is easily swayed by suggestion.  He does not stand up for himself, relying, if passively, on Ryuji to fight his battles for him.  Ryuji is the most conflicted of the characters, even if he's only open and honest to himself.  Saki's arc is perhaps the most interesting though.

    Saki's background and struggles were an unexpected depth to the story that didn't start to take shape until the second half of the series.  It pushed her from being a generic character who was only there to propel the focus of the story into a different and equally important thread in the tale.  Her arc was not tied to Makoto and Ryuji but their friendship with her tied them to it.  Ryuji himself is the control in this test.  He comes from a loving and supportive family and only struggles with his internal crisis'.  Makoto and Saki struggle with both internal and external issues that allow Ryuji to be a stabilizing force in their dynamics.  I can't speak enough about how lovely and well paced this story was.  The characterization was fantastic and real in a very appreciable way.  Whats better is the story will conclude with a movie set to release in February of 2025.

 

    The series was simulcast on Crunchyroll.