I'm tentatively excited about this one so far. I went in cautious, because I've mostly seen "otokonoko" used as a fetish term in a very transphobic way, and anime doesn't have a great track record with gender diversity, but I think this went well overall. I expect we're in for a pretty deep exploration of Makoto's gender identity and expression and the transphobia / femmephobia that exist in their life specifically and in the culture at large, and I am here for it. What I am not here for, though, is Aoi's chaser attitude (hopefully she gets better), which makes her character feel very weak when contrasted against Ryuuji's secret crush and his obviously complicated feelings about sexuality and how gender plays into that.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode and am choosing (for now) to give it the benefit of the doubt that it won't turn transphobic itself by the end. 4/5

Aoi's voice is cute and pretty much tracks how I imagined it when I read the manga. She's gonna be annoying IRL, though. Looking forward to future episodes

@rikka@ani.social

The direction was pretty good for a low-key story. I can see where they might have saved money going to cartoony action scenes for humor.

Not bad.

The MC seems a bit vanilla though, voicing nothing about her own desires and needs, instead serving as an axis for the two other characters to revolve around.

p.s. "kohai" means "junior", it's the opposite of "senpai"