I feel like I was the only person on the face of the Earth who was the least bit excited for Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota. Why not? I enjoyed the first episode enough, with its solid direction and its spin on the archetypal “opposites attract” premise. He’s an over-the-top male tsundere, she’s a reserved weirdo. They attend the same high school; he tries to break through her tough exterior, and together they embark on a tried-but-true bout of rom-com wackiness. Sure, it had a paint-by-the-numbersness about it that would immediately bar it from being in the top five anime of the season. But as they say, dem’s da breaks, and I accepted that with a smile on my face. Really, I did. At first. Then I realized that the anime doesn’t go beyond being what it was at the start. By the time I was midway through the series, the gimmick of conflicting personalities had worn itself so microscopically thin.

One of the biggest issues facing this show is that, despite the title, both characters are equally inexpressive, since they are confined to conveying just one emotion each. Kashiwada is always reserved, Oota is always annoyed. That’s it. Their personalities (or really, lack of) become the punchlines for every scene without any attempt to subvert expectations. There’s even an episode midway through the anime that flashes back to the moment they met in elementary school. While it does have its moments of adorableness, it reveals them as essentially the same people, expressing the same emotions. Imagine having that one pair of side characters from a better rom-com that appear for maybe just a few scenes yet make zero presence, but make them the main characters for an entire cour, and that’s what you get with Kashiwada and Oota.

The anime’s first episode looks promising enough with its neat gags and solid direction. By the next episode or two, however, you realize that the hand is shown too quickly here. Through the gags shared between its two leads, the direction the anime was bound to go down anyway is revealed in a rather drab manner, ringing out the anime’s death knell. Oota tries to provoke a reaction out of Kashiwada within the first few minutes of the anime, and this goes on to become the anime’s biggest and most recurring joke, resurfacing again and again in different ways. It all ends with Oota failing in his mischievous goals, oftentimes becoming the butt of the joke. You want this type of gag to be this anime’s equivalent of Wile E. Coyote’s desperate attempts to snag the Road Runner. Instead, it all feels like Sisyphus pushing up the boulder, done to an agonizing, dull degree. Kashiwada is the boulder Oota is doomed to support, and try as poor Oota might, his actions can move neither Kashiwada nor the audience. The direction and animation are decent on the eyes, but they don’t leap off the screen with intoxicating hyperbole and liveliness.

Rom-com lives and dies on the two leads’ relationship and how much we like them. All of the ingredients are there to make for an intriguing relationship, yet none of the romance ever comes to a simmer. The tender scenes of them together don’t add much, and there’s no sense of “will they or won’t they” since it’s evident from the start that they not-so-secretly like each other. The usual modes of high school rom-com are utilized throughout, and therefore, there’s nothing that can come as a surprise. There isn’t much I can hate here, but there isn’t much to love either.

Obviously, I was underwhelmed by this anime. It’s not without its redeeming features. Again, the first episode and its barrel of gags start the anime off well enough, and the snowball fight in the sixth episode is kind of fun. The backgrounds are detailed, the colors are bright, and its cuteness makes for a pass in my book. Kashiwada and Oota’s designs are halfway decent, even if I’ve seen similar ones appear in so many different anime before. But alas, there is nothing new we can take away from here in Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota. The story and its characters simply exist for the sake of existing; moe that we gawk at but briefly, a piece of fluff that floats among the vast sea of seasonals. Nothing more.