Episode 4 – Bad Girl

If nothing else, episode four of Bad Girl starts surprisingly strong despite it focusing on the kindergarten location and characters. I didn’t write about Yuu’s first venture to this locale in my review of the first three episodes, as it didn’t make much of an impression on me. While it’s entertaining on a surface level to see an entire classroom of near-toddlers express their love for Atori with a level of eloquence that they’d be incapable of in real life, it felt like the premise was the entire joke the first time around, and there were more interesting segments to break down in that run of episodes.

In episode four, though, this bit is already starting to evolve to a terrific effect. Yuu’s expressly invited back to the kindergarten by Maria, Atori’s biggest fan there. As soon as she arrives, the passive Yuu is forced to be a chair for Maria for what I assumed would just be a student council-style club meeting for all of the other Atori fans at the early childhood development facility. Hilariously, though, these very young children are pantomiming a board of executives at a large-scale company, and even developing a Multi-Level Marketing scheme to make other people love Atori as much as they do. This subversion and escalation of the situation got more than a chuckle out of me as the children listed off scam products to get the word up about Atori’s awesomeness.

While I think the kids continuing to question Yuu’s love of Atori feels a bit forced and out of place in the show, as she’s often chastised by other characters for being too into Atori, the ending gag stuck the landing for me in this opening segment. Yuu’s phone chimes and plays “Verbal Abuse ASMR,” which is the clip of Atori saying “I hate you” from earlier in the series to cure Yuu of her hiccups, which motivates the kids to call Atori to uncover the exact nature of their relationship. As Yuu suspects, Atori confirms that she thinks of Yuu as her pet, which the children are forced to acknowledge.

While Yuu is initially bummed about this dynamic between her and Atori becoming more well-known, a pep talk from Suzu later has her feeling better about their current relationship. My only complaint about this opening is that there are some pretty unnecessary shots of Suzu’s feet, ass, crotch, and breasts in the transition to a later part of the day, but on the whole, this segment is helping me warm up to kindergarten sections of the show.

The second act focuses on Yuu discovering Atori’s terrible drawings. Rather than accept that her idol is less than perfect in any dimension, Yuu contorts her evaluation of the obtuse images she’s seeing into being abstract drawings of mythical creatures, with Atori soon after admitting that they’re drawings of her walk to school that morning and her family’s dogs. This bit isn’t bad, per se, but it does feel like a single joke stretched out over five and a half minutes. I’m confident that this isn’t the last time Bad Girl will feature a joke where Yuu twists her worldview to keep her idealization of Atori intact.

The third act has Yuu and Suzu heading to the movies to watch a yakuza movie, so Yuu has more inspiration the next time she has to do something bad. There, they run into Rura, who’s watching the same movie, and I enjoyed her presence in this episode much more than in the previous episode. The setup opens with Yuu and Suzu completely taking the piss out of Rura by being incredibly nonchalant about their last interaction and her presence there. Rura even takes umbrage at Yuu and Suzu acting like a couple before the movie begins, and I love that this show is starting to more overtly acknowledge the romantic undertones of their relationship.

As the movie goes on, Rura becomes increasingly captivated by Yuu’s smol bean antics and her outsized reactions to the movie’s mature situations, which include a call back to Yuu’s Space Odyssey-inspired reaction to sexual material. After the movie, they sit down for drinks, and the three develop more of a rapport as friends, though Rura has to beg them to give her the nickname of Ruu-senpai. While I don’t think this will be the end of the parts of Rura’s character that grate on me, this new dynamic should help and lead to some more novel situations for the main cast.

The post-credits gag once again features Rura being bullied by her stream’s chat, and though it’s a double beat, I enjoyed this joke just as much the second time around.

Outside of that creep shot of Suzu, the animation in this episode was once again serviceable, and the voice acting equally adequate. While I wish this episode had immediately built upon the growing dynamic between Yuu and Atori teased in the last episode, bringing Rura more cleanly into the fold is a solid development that hopefully gives way to more character growth and entertaining interactions. While the middle stretch was a total miss for me, the beginning and end segments saved it and brought this episode back to above average.

Rating:

Lucas DeRuyter is the de facto Bad Boy of anime reviews (no one else was using the moniker). He rolls with ANN’s This Week and Anime crew, and you can check out his coolest work in his portfolio. You can also find him sticking it to the man on his Bluesky account.

Bad Girl is currently streaming on
HIDIVE.