Tai Ari Deshita.: Ojo-sama wa Kakuto Game Nante Shinai (2023)

A fun but disappointing show

As someone who loves the manga, I was really excited to watch how they would handle in live action. The trailer looked pretty cool and the fact that they're playing an actual fighting game - Street Figther, I honestly couldn't see them screwing up this. But how naïve I was...

The show itself wasn't terrible. The adaptation was decently faithful to the source throughout most of its run, and despite a lot of moments feeling more awkward or even cringe due to the exaggerated manner that which the characters express their excitement during the matches, I still found myself enjoying the show and always craving for more. The show was cringe but in a good and fun way.

So... you may be surprised as to why I would give such a low score to this, and the reason is very simple: the last episode. The ending of it betrays the whole spirit of the show but, to explain that, I'll have to spoil a little bit, so beware of that. I don't know if this show got canceled, but the manga is still running and it's currently in the middle of a tournament arc. The show adapts this part, but changes into a team mode competition, and changes the matchups. The matches carry way less intensity and drama compared to the manga, but they were still fun to watch.

The problem is that after they finish the tournament, our characters are back at their school lives... only to find out that the whole school is aware of their presence at the gaming tournament. Now our cast is faced with a life-defining choice... and the result of it is beyond disappointing. Any form of character development is thrown into the trash can, the entire journey of our MC discovering herself and finding that she can be this proper lady that she envisions without having to give up her own interests, her own personality, suddenly feels like nothing more than a fever dream, a mere delusion that never happened.

I expected that the show would challenge the notion that "young ladies don't play fighting games" as the title itself suggests, but at the end of it, honestly, it feels to me that the show only affirmed that, they indeed, don't play fighting games...

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