Ao-chan Can’t Study!

Ao-chan Can’t Study!

Ao-chan Can't Study! anime series cover art
Ao-chan Can’t Study!

Overview

Ao-chan Can’t Study (Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai / 淫らな青ちゃんは勉強ができない) is an ecchi rom-com from the Spring 2019 season. Like many of the anime from this season, its episodes are only 12 minutes in length.

While I don’t think every series needs full-length episodes, this is one that could have benefited from it. It’s by no means a great anime, but it was good enough that I tended to want more of it by the time the episodes ended.

On the other hand we have a series like The Helpful Fox Senko-san which I think would have been better if the episodes were shorter like this. The reason Ao-chan would have worked with longer episodes is because it actually has a story line (somewhat).

The fact that this series is tagged as an ecchi may turn some people away from it, but I’d barely classify it as ecchi. It’s a romantic comedy in which the protagonist, Ao, is a pervert, but it doesn’t typically play up the fan service like you might expect.

Ao Horie from the anime series Ao-chan Can't Study!
Ao Horie

The series follows Ao, a high school girl who wants nothing more than to study so that she can get into a good university far away from her father. However, she’s constantly distracted from her studies by her romantic, and often sexual, feelings towards one of her classmates, Kijima.

Kijima, on the other hand, likes Ao in a purely romantic way; or at least that’s what he forces himself to do. While Ao always wants Kijima to make a move on her, Kijima holds himself back because he doesn’t want to get in the way of Ao’s studies.

It’s somewhat refreshing to see an ecchi anime with a perverted, female protagonist rather than a male one.

Characters

It would be difficult to really explain why Ao Horie is the way she is without first going over her father, Hanasaki Horie. He’s a very small man, only coming up to about the height of Ao’s knees. He also has an extremely annoying voice (I’m sorry, whoever voices him).

But aside from him being the worst character of the series based solely on his appearance and voice, Hanasaki Horie traumatized his daughter due to his profession. He’s an eroge author. And if you don’t know what that means, think Fifty Shades of Grey.

This is also where Ao’s name comes from. “A” as in apple, “O” as in orgy. So this is why Ao wants to go to a university far away from her father. She wants to be somewhere her father can’t embarrass her.

Unfortunately, her embarrassing name isn’t the only thing she got from her father. It would seem that living under the same roof as him for all these years has also tainted her mind. Despite not wanting to be influenced by her father, her mind can’t help but wander and think about perverted things.

Takumi Kijima is the boy Ao likes. Luckily for her, but not for her studies, he likes her too. However, Ao wasn’t always interested in Kijima. He’s the popular boy who all the girls like, and because of this seemed to represent everything Ao hated, the sexual desires her father writes about.

But as we learn, this isn’t who Kijima is at all. He may be popular and good looking, but he has just as much dating experience as Ao does, none. It’s interesting to think that if Kijima was the protagonist of this series I’d call him a beta male, but since he’s not, he just seems like a fairly wholesome guy.

Takumi Kijima from the anime series Ao-chan Can't Study!
Takumi Kijima

And since I need to make this post longer, I guess we’ll be going over some of the more minor supporting characters now. First up we have Souichirou Yabe, Hanasaki Horie’s editor. Yabe is a pretty good character. He’s all business, but in a fairly unique way.

While he certainly does the stereotypical editor things such as locking Hanasaki in a room until he finishes his manuscripts, he also helps him make his deadlines in other ways. For one, he takes care of anything Ao needs, such as help studying, so that her father can work without distractions.

The final character I’ll mention is Miyabi Takaoka. Miyabi is Ao’s former best friend, though their friendship seems a bit complicated. Despite Miyabi being friendly with Ao, she was always jealous of the way Ao attracted the attention of all the boys.

However, Ao never noticed this and instead simply views Miyabi in a positive light. Even though Miyabi is also Ao’s romantic rival, they’re both going after Kijima, Ao doesn’t see this as something that would get in the way of their friendship.

Conclusion

I’d say that Ao-chan Can’t Study! is a 6/10 overall. It’s an enjoyable watch, but the fact that the episodes are only 12 minutes long really works against the series. If the episodes were full-length, then I could see this anime getting up to a 7/10.

And surprisingly, this series may have had my favorite OP of the season. The song was good, the animation was decent, and the art was pretty nice at times. But what I think I really liked were the camera angle changes throughout it. Portions of the OP had a nice, fluid feel to them.

The ED was nice too, but it definitely wasn’t the best of the season. It had a good song, but there wasn’t too much in the way of good animation or anything else that would have made it stand out. I actually had to look up the ED just now, which shows that it didn’t leave an impression.

I’m not sure if this series is getting a second season, but considering the worse anime which are, I wouldn’t mind having more of this.

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