ANIME REVIEW | With a "Deer Friend" Like This, Who Need Enemies?
Months before it even aired, My Deer Friend Nokotan was already a hot meme. The wacky trailers, the zany PR stunts, and even the hours-long loops of a few seconds of its opening theme song made it seem like the latest anime from WIT Studio (Attack on Titan, Spy × Family) would be too big to fail. But then, My Deer Friend Nokotan finally aired, and wouldn’t you know it? It failed. Hard!
So what went wrong? How could a well-respected anime studio and a director/writer duo (Himouto! Umaru-chan’s Masahiko Ohta & Takashi Aoshima) known for making great comedic hits stumble with My Deer Friend Nokotan? Was it a cultural barrier? A language barrier? Alas, it was a far more easier question to answer: My Deer Friend Nokotan just isn’t funny. Like, at all.
The story(?) of My Deer Friend Nokotan follows Koshitan (Saki Fujita), the Student Council President and former delinquent. Her world is turned upside-down when an antlered student Nokotan (Megumi Han) joins the school. Forced to be the school’s Deer Club President, Koshitan’s life becomes a living Hell thanks to Nokotan’s weird schticks. Things get a lot more worse when Koshitan’s crazy little sister Anko (Rui Tanabe) joins the club, alongside the freshman Bashame, who…is just really into rice? Together, they…do stuff, I guess.
This is where the first big issue of My Deer Friend Nokotan pops up. There is no real structure, no plot, nor is there a reason for the craziness that’s on display. Although you don’t need plot or reason for something nonsensical, there has to be some kind of structure that keeps it from falling over itself. Nichijou works because the characters have lovable qualities; both Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and Grand Blue Dreaming work because they have rock-solid plots; and Asobi Asobase works because it goes all in for the deranged kind of silly.
My Deer Friend Nokotan has none of these qualities. Nary a single character on this show is likable, resulting in this reviewer not giving two shits about them. Its gags have no rhyme or reason, which cause the humor to die like a first-time comedian at the Apollo. And for the life of me, I can’t seem to find a genuine plot in any of its episodes. For the twelve weeks this anime aired, I felt like I was wasting my time looking for a single laugh.
Can you guess how many times I actually laughed out loud watching My Deer Friend Nokotan? Three. When the students don’t react to Nokotan’s appearance, but to Koshitan’s past Yankee life; when the Deer God kicks Nokotan out of Heaven; and when Nokotan plays shitty guitar for the flower arrangement club. Three times I laughed during twelve episodes of this nonsense, meaning I spent 99.3% of its 276-minute runtime in complete silence.
When the first couple of trailers hit, anime fans exclaimed that this would be a return to a comedic style similar to Nichijou. But as the weeks went on, those fans kept getting quieter and quieter. And by the time the series had ended its run, there was nary a sound coming out of the fandom. My Deer Friend Nokotan wasn’t just a disappointment; it was a colossal failure for anime comedy. (Thank the comedy gods for that CITY adaptation that’s coming next year!)
I will say the only good thing to come out of My Deer Friend Nokotan: its music. Opener “Shikairo Days” by the main cast is a banger, with its visuals delivering more laughs than the actual show. Closer “Shika-senbei no Uta”, performed by Han and Fujita, is a terrific parody of the My Neighbor Totoro theme “Stroll”, with the marching melody amplifying the song’s goofiness. Yasuhiro Misawa — the go-to composer for Ohta & Aoshima — also delivers a good soundtrack, although it doesn’t do much to help with what’s happening onscreen.
Calling My Deer Friend Nokotan an unmitigated disaster is still underselling just how bad this anime is. It barely has a single laugh to be found, and it wastes the talents of every cast and staff member that had to work on it. If there’s something we as a collective can learn from this, it’s that you can’t make an anime out of a meme. To put it bluntly: I’d rather watch Bambi’s mom be shot in the face over and over again than subject myself once more to the awfulness that is My Deer Friend Nokotan.
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My Deer Friend Nokotan can be viewed on Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime, and has been licensed by Remow. Episodes 1-12 were observed for review. Promotional consideration provided by Crunchyroll.