Acchi Kocchi is an adaptation of a 4-koma manga, a slice-of-life comedy-about-romance-but-not-really-a-romantic-comedy about Tsumiki’s unrequited love for her friend Io, as well as all the things they get up to with their friends.
And it is so. Freaking. Adorable.
That simple fact can NOT be understated. The cuteness of Acchi Kocchi is damn near unparalleled by anything in recent times. All episodes have at least one “HNNNGGG” moment, most a buttload more. So how does it achieve this, and achieve it so well?
The driving factor for Acchi Kocchi’s cuteness is without a doubt the relationship between Io and Tsumiki. Tsumiki is an incredibly short girl with incredibly long hair, and who could broadly be described as a “tsundere”; albeit one that doesn’t stick all that closely to the archetype. Her brand is more just shyness – she shows no end to the affection she pours on Io, but generally tries to veil it as friendship (although all their friends around them see just how blatant she’s being). She doesn’t have much in the way of typically “tsuntsun” behaviours, rarely enacting her frustrations violently (and when she does it’s not in the typical ways or for the typical reasons), but instead is just unable to be open about her feelings. And as you might expect, she doesn’t respond well to teasing from her friends about her and Io.
Io on the other hand is a tall, cool, intelligent, charming, attractive young man who is completely fucking oblivious about Tsumiki, just seeing her as a close friend, resulting in much frustration from me because god DAMN it Io how do you not see just how goddamn cute she is AUGH. Most girls seem to crush on him to a greater or lesser extent, but this is understandable when you see just how effortlessly he’s able to say intensely romantic lines with a straight face and with conviction. Nosebleeds everywhere from the girls.
As said before, much of the cuteness comes from these two. Tsumiki tries to express her feelings to Io, or tries to do something for him, and then gets all flustered and embarrassed and oh god my heart. Io does something nice for her, or says something lovely to her, or pats her on the head, and she has a strong reaction and gets all swept away and weak and oh god my heart. And so on and so forth. It’s a simple formula, but simplicity can often lead to an elegant and effective execution, which as is the case here. It works really well, with the two of them having just the right traits and personalities and levels of reaction (both are quite subdued characters, so they never go over the top) to make their interactions believable and adorable. In short, their chemistry is excellent and leads to much “oh god I just wanna hug Tsumiki so bad”.
Not that the other characters don’t get their moments, but speaking exclusively in terms of ‘cuteness’, it’s mostly all concentrated on Io and Tsumiki (who are the focuses on the show, so it works out alright).
No, the other characters are mostly there to set up and make jokes. It can be as simple as a stupid little conversation with each other, as lovely as teasing Tsumiki resulting in “hnnnggg”, or as frenetic and action-packed as ‘kick-the-can’ or a snowball fight (they’re pretty wonderfully nuts scenes you guys). They all have their charm for sure, complement Io and Tsumiki rather well, and have some absolutely excellent moments, but they become overshadowed by that shining couple quite badly at times. Everything they do revolves around Io and Tsumiki anyway so it doesn’t come as a surprise.
Acchi Kocchi’s soundtrack is also excellent. It covers a range of styles, and manages to stand out within the show but never feels out of place or forced. On the contrary; the music matches the show incredibly well, setting and working with the tone, the pace and the mood of any given scene. It also goes with the relatively subdued characters, pacing and progression to help give the show its relaxed, often peaceful feeling.
As does the art style, too. It utilises puni-plush character designs and a pastel colour palette to create a soft, gentle appearance to the show, but goes further to really create something that stands out, at least a bit, visually. Firstly, the lighting, shading and very rounded linework on the characters have the result of making the hair and clothing look rather jelly-like or rubbery. It’s… odd? It’s not bad by any means, and makes them all look soft and huggable in a different way to the usual marshmallow-esque softness most puni-plush designs employ, but it does strike me as a bit of a weird choice. It’s not an improvement but also not a detriment, just a little strange. Secondly, the use of large, animated rounded arrows, circles, and text to convey thoughts, emotions and actions, as well as scene transitions. Thirdly, all background characters are given a muted colour palette, little detail, and covered in large Ben-Day dots. The effect this gives is to make those background characters simultaneously stay as background details by having all the characters we should be interested in contrast strongly with them, and stand out by adding to Acchi Kocchi’s visual flair in a subtle and pleasant way. These all work to add to the soft, gentle but also cartoony feel of Acchi Kocchi, and at the very least it makes it aesthetically pleasing and a bit different.
Finally, there’s one huge, but not necessarily apparently obvious point, about Acchi Kocchi that works tremendously in why I found it so appealing and so enjoyable: its innocence.
Ecchi fanservice is a pretty big thing in most shows that rely heavily on moe appeal. It makes sense why – moe girls are often squarely targeted at the otaku audience, so why not go the whole hog in pandering to them and add panties and boobs and stuff? The examples of this are too numerous (and too crappy) to mention individually, but a recent one that did this kind of thing quite heavily was Sankarea. The titular girl was meant to invoke all these protective feelings and so and so forth, moe moe etc., but the producers weren’t above sexualising her pretty heavily when it suited them.
The problem with that is that it feels at odds with the feelings ‘moe’ is meant to encapsulate, at least to me. Innocence ties heavily into it, especially when it’s a highschool cute-girls-doing-cute-things type series. So when the characters are being sexualised it just feels like it cheapens the whole deal. It adds a sense of perviness to what I feel shouldn’t have it. Hidamari Sketch is an example which managed to avoid that, including a bathing scene in nearly every episode and at least a couple of bath-house scenes, but managed to only, at worst, toe the line between ‘innocent portrayal of the characters’ and ‘woo porn’. The characters may have been nude, but it never felt like that was the prominent aspect or the point of those scenes. Rather, just one of the things they were doing that day. Lucky Star is a great example – one particular conversation basically ended up just being rather unsubtle innuendo based around ‘sausages’ and ‘eggs’, but instead of being “woo sex appeal” it instead felt like a natural conversation fitting the characters personalities and ages.
And of course, no discussion on this would be complete without K-On!. One of the reasons mentioned for its massive, mainstream popularity in Japan is its innocence. By avoiding ecchi fanservice and just keeping the tone ‘innocent’ (at this point I’m really hoping you’re not interpreting ‘innocent’ to be ‘virginal’ or anything similar. I’m using ‘innocent’ innocently, I swear!) K-On! manages to appeal to a greater number of people, as well as allowing the viewers to form bonds with the characters without feeling skeevy about it. It’s a show about girls playing music and drinking tea and being cute and that’s it and it’s lovely.
So back to Acchi Kocchi: how is this tangent relevant?
Acchi Kocchi is as, if not more, innocent in tone, in characterization, in general, than K-On!
There are only two moments in Acchi Kocchi that I can remember that could be described as ‘sexual’ in any way. The first one is in the first episode, where their teacher slips on the ice and the characters get a view up her skirt. The audience doesn’t get to see this, it’s just the characters, and the only one who cares to mention it is Sakaki, who just gives off the air of being that guy – the rest are either too polite, too nice, or just don’t care enough to discuss it. It’s closer to the Lucky Star example above than anything else – a moment more about the characters than any pandering to the audience. The second time is when Mayoi opens Tsumiki’s shirt to give Io a view of her bra. While this sounds like it would be pretty damn fanservicey (and it probably is a little), it really isn’t – the combination of the puni-plush style and the distance (ain’t no zoom in here) basically renders the bra as a blob of colour on Tsumiki. Certainly better than the Hidamari Sketch example, and maybe even than K-On!? Remember that moment in the first series where Mio fell over on stage and gave everyone a full on shot of her panties? While they weren’t explicitly shown, the scene cuts to a close-up of a blue and white striped rice bowl (or was it a cup of tea?), which strikes me as being a fair bit more risqué than what Acchi Kocchi employed.
So Acchi Kocchi is ‘innocent’. What of it? Well, the biggest draw of the show for me, as mentioned before, is just how cute Tsumiki is with her romantic feelings towards Io – and how she’s so innocent about it. There’s no “god do I want to get in his pants”, it’s all just about how much she loves him but can’t express her feelings – it’s young love! It just wouldn’t work if the characters were being sexualised for the audience’s pleasure. The charm is in the cuteness and the peaceful, innocent atmosphere. No need to ruin that with shots of undergarments!
It’s not all great though. Ok well actually it mostly is, but maybe if you have different-slash-wrong tastes and don’t find the idea of a concentrated dose of OH GOD SO CUTE MY HEART that appealing you might not find much to enjoy? Acchi Kocchi certainly has a sense of humor and can definitely be funny, but I wouldn’t say it’s that great of a comedy. The jokes tend to be fairly standard, repetitive, or just kinda weak when taken by themselves, but when in combination with an appreciation for the adorableness of it all they’re perfectly fine.
No, the biggest problem with Acchi Kocchi is the ending. Namely, WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE CONFESSION SCENE OH GOD THEY WERE BUILDING UP TO IT SO FUCKING MUCH WITH THE PREVIOUS EPISODE AND EVEN THE FIRST HALF OF THE LAST EPISODE BUT THEN FUCKING NOTHING. Acchi Kocchi gave me the equivalent of blue balls for ‘hnnnggg’, which is probably for the best really because a confession scene would have likely given me a heart attack for real. Seriously, the cuteness of it all had actual physical effects on me – heart skipping a beat and all that stuff. An actual heart attack was a legitimate concern of mine. But yeah, it did feel like there was something MAJOR missing at the end, ruined the satisfaction a bit. Had it been included, I would have absolutely no reservations about it whatsoever.
Acchi Kocchi is so freaking adorable. That was what it was trying to be, what it was aiming for, and it nailed it. It doesn’t try to be much more than that, instead focusing hard on it getting it down. Will it be remembered in a year’s time? Probably not. Will it have any lasting impact? Unlikely. But I found it to be immensely enjoyable, and every episode left me grinning like an idiot. If you like anime about cute high-school girls, you will undoubtedly enjoy Acchi Kocchi. I know I did. A LOT.
9/10
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