A young boy and girl, thrust together by either some small happenstance or some epic nudge from the great hand of fate, go on an adventure together. Along the way, they learn a little something about themselves and each other through the powerful connection they share. This is the basic setup for any number of stories, and one that anime in general has wholeheartedly embraced in the last few years.
But rarely has the connection between the two leads seemed as unexplainable (or downright detrimental) as it is in Netflix’s new anime movie My Oni Girl. None of the fault lies with the oni girl herself, a one-horned demon named Tsumugi who leaves the safety of her home (a secret oni community called The Hidden Village) in hopes of tracking down her mother at a Japanese shrine in the human world. Tsumugi, with her colorful hair and occasional lack of interest in human societal norms, seems to have been pulled from a slightly more clichéd YA-leaning rom-com – one where she’s the super-cool object of affection for the relatably sensitive male hero – but she is by far the most fully realized character in the film.
She may be the object of someone’s (chaste, vaguely defined) affections, but she’s no object. So it’s a shame that she’s saddled with an absolutely nothing of a co-star in teen boy Hiiragi, one of the most unlikable protagonists in the history of this kind of magical-realist fantasy romance. (Comparing him to, say, Taki from Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name is .