Released for winter 2014 by the studio Silver Link.
Nourin is de-facto Silver Link light novel adaptation fodder, and you can truly only blame yourself if you end up watching it and feeling disappointed. But admittedly, Nourin isn’t an unwatchable comedy anime. By seasonal anime standards, I could call this dumb, I can cry about it not being funny, but I wouldn’t call it boring, and I wouldn’t call it meaningless.
Though I have to say, it’s a bit meaningless trying to review something like this… Blame my past self for taking on the “review some random dumbass anime” challenge, but when I said I was going to revisit all my previous anime reviews and touch them up for the Red Sea, I wasn’t kidding!
I wonder what’s for dinner…
Nourin features a “city girl moves to the country” type of story, a concept that Silver Link tackled only one year prior (in fact, only one SEASON prior) with their Non Non Biyori adaptation. But whereas Non Non Biyori is tuned to an iyashikei simmer, Nourin is blasted to the Silver Link comedy extremes. Our ‘city girl’ in this scenario is more than just an ordinary student, instead being a famous idol, Ringo, whom our main character, Kousaku, is a huge fan of. Go figure she not only transfers to the same school, but slides directly into the same class as her obsessive fan. But wait! Kousaku shouldn’t betray his childhood friend, Minori! She’s desperate for his affection, and if he strays away from the Japanese mandated ‘childhood friend’ route, she will literally DIE from loneliness and sadness.
Alright, she won’t literally die, but if you’re expecting a meaningful romance to sprout from this, you’ve picked up the wrong anime. This show is dangerously stupid, and Nourin goes off the rails incredibly fast as side characters pop in one by one with increasing levels of absurdity. Even the teacher is ridiculous, constantly trying to seduce the male students while attacking the female ones out of jealousy.
This is how it actually feels like to be an idol fan in 2024.
The splattering of immature humor requires some high tolerance from the audience. You’ll have to stomach many jokes about breast size, dick jokes, BL parodies completely with suggestive white liquids… This isn’t to say that Nourin doesn’t have its own moments of ambition and dignity. It’s just that most of its content is meant to appeal to us trash connoisseurs with its nonsense humor and bountiful amounts of sexual innuendo. Nothing wrong with some dumb humor or dirty jokes from time to time, though Nourin is bordering on overkill! Occasionally, Nourin tries to remedy this overwhelming stupidity with informational bits related to agriculture. It’s all clearly been well researched, and their knowledge is presented in a way that doesn’t feel too shoed in. You can argue that it’s pointless to include anything informative in a comedy this dumb, but then again, what wouldn’t feel pointless being dumped into a Silver Link adaptation like this one?
Kousaku is constantly struggling to choose between the two main girls of the show, Ringo and Minori. The winner ultimately doesn’t matter, because firstly, you know this is a hack story and the childhood friend will win no matter what. And secondly, the Nourin anime doesn’t have a ‘winner’. This is only a one-cour light novel adaptation, so any sense of closure is off the table here. Instead, the two girls get their own little moments with Kousaku, but the depth of their relationship never develops. At most, you learn about Kousaku’s past connections with these two girls. Minori’s family essentially helped raise Kousaku, with Ringo serving as inspiration for the protagonist (and Minori) to keep moving forward.
Nourin’s complete lack of direction hurts it in the long run, however. This is an anime that does little more than to serve the niche of wanting to watch something simple and dumb, without having to resort to pure romcom fodder. This is only a step above the bottom line, though at the very minimum, it manages to avoid being too predictable or too sappy. The characters aren’t awful, it looks fine visually, and although it isn’t memorable for any good qualities, it is at least hard to forget about its existence once you’ve seen it.
An accurate depiction of my Nourin viewing experience
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