English Dub Review: My First Girlfriend Is a Gal “My First Time Begging for It”

This definitely isn’t the first perverted high school anime you’ve seen.

Spoilers Below

First things first, what is a gal? From slight research, a Gal, or more commonly known as Gyaru, in Japan is a fashion- and peer- conscious teen. They are often characterized by having heavily bleached or dyed hair, highly decorated nails, dramatic makeup, and fashion that originated from Japanese street fashion in the 1970s. In a less cluttered sense, it’s essentially the Western’s valley girl archetype. Well, I’m glad I figured that out, had no idea what the title meant at first so was determined to do research to find out. Although researching from the show page on Wikipedia it seems the anime’s version of Gal is also “very sexually promiscuous.” Which truly would fit the anime’s style of narrative and writing far better.

It’s an ecchi high school comedy, filled to the brim with likely bachelorettes that want to fall in love with our loser of the day Junichi Hashida. His issue is that he’s now a sophomore in high school and still hasn’t had sex. However, the reason why is easily explainable when he surrounds himself with three other losers who are disturbingly perverted. Going as far as to read porn magazines in the middle of class to ruin the mood for all the couples in the classroom. Though to be fair this school is pretty lax when it comes to these couples groping and squeezing each other at school so maybe porn mags would be fine.

Against Junichi’s better judgment though, he partakes in some porn time but then gets spooked and called out as a pervert by the series’ gal, Yukana Yame. So totally demoralized by Yukana, of course, his friends force him into an embarrassing situation where they fake a love letter to her so that Junichi can ask out Yukana. Just to reiterate Junichi will be “begging” as the title implies so that Yukana, a girl he doesn’t even know, out as his girlfriend. Why would he go through with something that sounds so brain numbingly contrived? Because he is a pervert obviously, they even visualize his perverted lust with a panty face covered version of himself fighting against the good him inside his little weird head.

I want to push through the negatives first as by my prediction these set of them will dissipate with time. I am of course talking about the four perverts. Junichi and his three friends, Shinpei, Keigo and Minoru come off as such unlikeable characters in this opening. Well maybe a better way to phrase their unlikeability is that I really don’t want to try to like them as with the three friends, in particular, they are so unashamedly perverted in a very negative direction. Perversion is a trait that most humans can relate to as we all have something that can make us feel good sexually. In that sense I get it, in another, these three have the makings of sexual predators serenading together how they like little girls to the point where it’s past dark comedy uncomfortable to just uncomfortable. Before I continue, yes, lolicon is a lucrative porn genre in especially Japan and as long as it is online and away from actual little girls I don’t really care who enjoys it. However, when you characterize the three guys getting turned on by their high school classmate in an elementary school uniform that just leaves it hard for me to follow along.

Junichi isn’t much better as he gets roped into “confessing” to Yukana even when he knows nothing about her personally. This is because as was stated by the charismatic third in the trio of lolicon lovers that Yukana is “easy.” This may be the joke of the show but this perverted comedy just has such a fine line between funny to just reprehensible behavior. How can I root for a guy who is all about sex and doesn’t give a crap about the girl he wants to have sex with? It may be a start to his character arc but it begs the question, are you willing to sit through an arc where the main character started off as a perverted pig? For me, I think I may be able to as, unlike his friends Junichi’s inner pervert seems to fully embrace itself making the perverted comedy a fight between protecting his ego and self-respect and fighting his sexual urges which oddly enough makes him more endearing than the vindictive porn trio.

Speaking of embracing itself that seems to be the characterization method of the growing line up of girls that will inevitably all be after Junichi. Each girl feels like a truly captured portrayal of their role. We got the petite childhood friend Nene Fujinoki who undoubtedly was designed for the lolicon market or the designers just felt it necessary to stable two water balloons under her shirt. Next is the quiet and popular Yui Kashī who at this point has just approached as the classroom’s nice girl but will undoubtedly turn bad girl to fulfill that trope. Finally, the last girl to be truly introduced is Yukana, and she is without question very sexually promiscuous which I like, in the vein that I would find it more cliché if she was all high and mighty about pushing sex away. It’s a girl’s gallery of archetypes that Junochi has to choose from and that already feels much more interesting than the perverted joke angle.

It really is just a by the books ecchi high school anime. I don’t feel I can recommend this show when there are undoubtedly many others that have done far superior jobs in terms of characterization and emotion within its writing. Even the animation and dubbing is just okay plus the censoring is more over the top than Seven Mortal Sins which I didn’t think was possible. I am not saying the show is bad but it definitely has room to grow and hopefully now that it’s past this initial awkward pervert moment, the future relationship and other inevitable wacky pervert moments will bring some much-needed interest back.