AKA: 道産子ギャルはなまらめんこい (Dosanko Gal wa Namaramenkoi)

Genre: Romance, slice-of-life

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: PG-13 (Fanservice, covered-up nudity.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: My First Girlfriend is a Gal (sans the last two episodes), My Dress-up Darling, Please Tell Me, Galko-chan (if you're willing to forego the romance element)

Notes: Based on the manga series written and illustrated by Kai Ikada, serialized in Shounen Jump.

Rating:

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Synopsis

Moving to Hokkaido, Shiki Tsubasa finds himself in a bit of a spot after leaving his taxi too far from his destination -- as in three hours by foot too early. Thankfully, he gets help from one of the friendly local Hokkaido gals, Fuyuki Minami. As it turns out, they become classmates at his new school, and so starts his new life in Hokkaido.

Review

When I put this show in my queue, I expected it to be something more along the lines of Please Tell Me! Galko-chan set in Hokkaido while also fearing I'd get another dose of My Little Sister is an Osakan Momma as far as comedy went. As it turns out, Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! is neither; it's more of a romantic comedy with a side order of travelogue.

In fact, the show doesn't even start on said gals, but on our male lead, Tsubasa. Not being one of the popular kids in Tokyo, he wasn't sure how Hokkaido would take to him, but as it turns out, he didn't really need to worry. His first encounter is with Minami, who, while she loves to tease the everloving crap out of the guy, is an incredibly sweet and friendly girl. This did lead to another worry; that Tsubasa would be another blank-slate male harem lead who would have no personality outside of being "nice", but thankfully, he is a bit more than that. He is of course entirely unaccustomed to girls actually talking to him, never mind being flirty, but as the show goes along, we do get to learn a bit more about his family, and it's apparently not been just a dance among the roses. His family is quite wealthy, and Tsukasa seems to be a very talented pianist, which strikes me as a "family of some influence" kind of talent to have. He is very meek, which would maybe indicate that his family is of the more controlling type, which you can see traces of with his grandmother. She is strict, imposes curfews to control his education level with threats of being sent back to Tokyo if he steps out of line, and as a result, her own grandson is afraid of her. I half expected both his parents to be as bad, but his father seems rather chill about the whole thing, so I'm guessing the grandmother is on the mother's side. Probably. And at least his grandmother is willing to adjust as long as he seems to be keeping up.

Minami is more of an everyday girl, though. She's quite attractive, and not just because of her looks. She is very curious about the newcomer, especially after she learns he is from Tokyo originally, but even outside of that, she's just very friendly and outgoing without letting those aspects crowd more introverted people. Sure, she also loves teasing Tsubasa by being flirtatious or just laughing at his nervous reactions, but there is nothing meanspirited about any of it. And as her relationships with Tsubasa deepens, I would continue to be surprised by her absolute refusal to even consider typical romance-level jealousy fits, even when he inevitably gains more friends, and mostly female ones at that. She isn't the studious type, but that doesn't mean she's stupid either.

One of those friends turns out to be Akino Sayuri. On the surface, she seems cool and standoffish, but in reality, she's a very heavily introverted videogame enthusiast who is very unsure of how to make friends at all. Through circumstance, Tsubasa somehow manages to stumble into what eventually becomes her own friendship circle, and with him, Minami quickly follows. Following the theme of consideration, nobody thinks of her as unfriendly as much as just hard to approach, and as it turns out, she was mostly just worried about how people would think of her "real" self. Although even after she warms up to Tsubasa and the other girls, she's still not the most talkative of the group. There is, as Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! points out, absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I'm always thankful when shows acknowledge this. She has some thoughts about what it means to be a new person and a bit of a loner, which is in line with the general throughtfulness of the show itself. She can be a little bit pushy about her gaming interest, which is honestly kind of funny and very much in line with her personality and her nerd interests (that she's continuously worried about.)

And then we have Natsukawa Rena, the school idol (of sorts.) Like Tsubasa, she comes from a family of high standing, with all the pressures that entails. She's the school genius, often taking first place in tests and other scholatic endeavours, and she's got a bit of a thing for traditional clothing as well. She seems more than a bit eccentric, which might just be her way of dealing with all that pressure, and she also takes a bit of an interest in Tsubasa, who's also quite well schooled and seems to want to escape the weight of his old life. She's a bit hard to judge, but I would guess a lot of her personal quirks comes from wanting to strike out more on her own as opposed to that image she has made for herself just to make others proud of her.

One thing I picked up almost immediately in regard to Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! is how considerate everyone is. Tsubasa's might have been borne out of him not being with the "in" crowd back in Tokyo, so he's of course going to react positively to everyone who treats him with kindness, but Minami is an extrovert without a clique, simply because she likes everyone. She is cheerful to a fault, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's without limit. One of the episodes are centered around Valentine's day, and Minami is of course all about making chocolates for her entire class. If you'll forgive me the spoiler, an accident this particular year forces her to rely on some store-bought stuff, which prompted a thoughtlessly unwarranted comment from one of her male classmates, but she's still mostly hurt because of the accident prevented her from doing just that. The resulting "fallout" (if you can even call it that) is handily resolved by people being communicative, and Tsubasa's way of cheering her up once he learned the full story is not only oddly heartwarming, but ties itself perfectly to the whole thematic of consideration. Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! also gets plus points for having a more moderate bunch of guys as Minami's classmates; as in they clearly are interested in girls and do care about getting chocolates from them -- even "courtesy/friend" chocolates -- they aren't going out of their way to be sex pests or making the girls around them feel uncomfortable. The mood in the show is quite frankly infectious.

Out of the few "gal" shows I've seen so far, Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! is probably the one who's the most into beauty products. While it's easy for me and others to question the necessity of it, Minami seems to be doing it mostly for the fun rather than the general undertone of "bring out your beauty with this, you ugly duckling" I see in ads every now and then, and I can respect that. In a neat twist, I do wonder if Minami being a countryside gal is what makes her come across as a more practical one. She does have a good sense of style, even if that means seeing her wear stuff that had to feel cold to wear on a winter day. The art style leans on a more cartoonish style, so the girls have greatly emphasised curves even under a thick layer of winter clothing, and there is also a decent amount of fanservice to go around. Most of it is centered around Minami, as she's the one who loves teasing the everloving bejeezus out of Tsubasa at any given moment, including sending some pretty saucy selfies while in the bath. The show even had the heart to make Tsubasa walking in on Sayuri by accident while she was wiping sweat off her body, and not only did Sayuri not blame Tsubasa for something that was purely an accident (and Tsubasa had the decency to immediately turn around and apologize once he realized what was going on), but that turned into the first bonding moment between the two. And did Minami get jealous? She sure did. She was super DUPER upset that she wasn't invited to become Sayuri's friend as well, because she had wanted to for so long. Oh, you thought I meant that Minami would be jealous about Tsubasa and punish him for having the audacity to talk to other girls? Have you read nothing so far?

And speaking of fanservice; how about that Hokkaido scenery? The backgrounds are maybe not quite on the level of the first two seasons of Laid-Back Camp, but this is still some absolutely lovely snowy scenery. It's borderline travelogue at times, but that doesn't make me any less jealous of a place that can have a nice and consistent amount of snow throughout all of winter. And on that note, I'd also like to talk about the English dub a bit. With Hokkaido being the northernmost region of Japan, a lot of the characters -- Minami and her family in particular -- sound very Canadian. Well, at least as far as this Norwegian can tell, as I can't really say whether the Canadian accents I've heard so far are either normal accents or exaggerated for effect. It's not a strong accent, and having the location in Japan being what decides the accent is not an unfamiliar thing for people who has watched dubbed anime set in Osaka, or with people from Osaka. (Azumanga Daioh comes to mind, for instance.) And the dub is good, don't get me wrong. Matt Shipman does make Tsubasa's embarrassed outbursts a little easier on the ear, and him and the girls still make the show a hoot to listen to, even if Minami might be overusing the "totes" and the "jellies" and the other slang a lot.

And the background art's gonna have to carry the load too, because while the character designs are generally nice, at least in closeups, the animation is.... not great. The show particularly seems to struggle with character in a distance, but the character movement is weirdly stiff at times (no innuendo intended), and it does suffer from derpface and other visual issues that could have been so much better. Characters turning around or generally moving feels odd and unnatural, and that's not going into the times the show goes into a still frame or uses speed lines to convey urgency.

With three female leads, does that mean Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! is a harem? Maybe to some extent, but while the other two girls has a visible interest in Tsubasa, his relationship with Minani is clearly the front seat one in this show. She might've been the one first at the starting line, but she also gets the majority of the screentime among the three, even when she's just by herself. She's also the only one of the three whose family we get to meet, and she's also the one whom the closing episodes are centered around, so I think it's fair to assume she'll be the one Tsubasa eventually marries. In an interesting mirror of another "gal girlfriend" show that turned out to be much better than I expected, My First Girlfriend is a Gal, Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!'s last two episodes are its weakest. And yet, it's not quite so: My First Girlfriend is a Gal's last two episodes were terrible. Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! is just in the unfortunate situation that its last minute drama escalation feels like a bit of a copout. The penultimate episode is in fact quite great, with Tsubasa and Minami going on a date to a local park in Abashiri and partaking in the local vibes. This is also where the show had Tsubasa put forward his biggest foot and firmly shove it in his mouth, and let me tell you, that cringe was painful. While I wouldn't necessarily think the thing he said was entirely out of the ordinary for an overly nervous boy who has probably heart no shortage of words about how uncool he is, the episode was so aggressively romantic that I'm surprised even he didn't get the hint.

And all that was the leadup to the last episode where Minami sprung the big surprise on him -- she would be going abroad to study fashion. That episode was so aggravatingly cliché'd in its navelgazing, right down to the "gotta catch her on the airport in the last second" scene that even Minami felt she needed to point out how cliché the whole thing was, even if she was happy that he'd play the part. And while I didn't enjoy this copout of an ending to the level I was hoping for, it wasn't as catastrophic as My First Girlfriend is a Gal. I'm not demanding that Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! has to be good vibes from beginning to end, so you can consider this my little complaint or nitpick when it comes to this show: it's ending could have been a bit better. Just a little. But in the end, I can't help but recommend the heck of this slice of welcoming vibes.

Sweet, wholesome and thoughtful. Detract a star or two depending on how much you hate low-stakes drama and generally good people all over. — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: There is literally no violence in this, not even slapstick. The main menu of this show is mostly through it's many instances of fanservice, which is only a small step up from mild with Minami's one segment from the bathtub in what would otherwise be a long line of relatively showy clothes that otherwise covers up the naughty bits. There is a joke where Minami spills milk over her cleavage that is a bit borderline bawdy, but as far as I can tell, the TV version didn't feel the need to add extra censorship; it's basically on that level.