If I only had one word to review Actually, I Am… , the word would be “unmemorable”, and if I had another word I’m not sure what I’d do with it, because really “unmemorable” captures everything I have to say about the show. It is almost incredible to me that a show with vampires, demons, talking glasses, and aliens can leave this little impact. Yes, all of them are high school students first and supernatural beings second, but I at least expected the supernatural aspect to add something to the show. From the first episode to the title itself, Actually, I Am… revolves around keeping secrets, but by the second episode the possibility of revealing the existence of these creatures to the world is relegated from central plot point to the backup gag when the well of typical rom-com slapstick runs dry.
Theoretically each character gets deeper personification when their human aspects are combined with their true identities, but rather than making them two-dimensional they just get two one-dimensional lines, which barely end up intersecting. The central heroine is a seemingly shy girl named Shiragami Youko with a thick Kansai dialect that grates on my nerves like Meika from Punch Line , but in reality she is a vampire! She is supposed to keep her identity secret, but is unfortunately spotted by the naïve and bumbling Kuromine Asahi, who stayed behind afterschool to confess his love to Shiragami. How she has come this far without being discovered is a mystery when someone like Kuromine can accidentally walk into a classroom and catch her with wings, fangs, and bats all in the open. Doubly so when we see her wings pop out at restaurants, the river side, and every other common area. Kuromine is traditionally bad at keeping secrets, but vows to keep her identity under wraps, while also managing to conceal his love for her. And so the show promptly puts her vampire identity mostly aside so Kuromine and Shiragami can enjoy a classic anime high school love comedy about two clueless and vapid boneheads who can’t seem to get a grip on their friendship, or anything beyond being friends.
There were so many chances to make the supernatural aspects really work. The strict class president turns out to be an alien, Kuromine’s emotionally abusive childhood friend has talking glasses, and even the principal is a pint-sized millennia-old demon. There were also chances to make concealing Shiragami’s identity more dire, like when her childhood friend comes to take her out of school for revealing herself to Kuromine. Her friend is a wolf-man who clearly loves her, and so we get someone who has a vested interest in being her boyfriend but who ultimately is willing to give her up and leave her in school so she can enjoy her new life. Well, this is what we here in the first ten minutes he is on screen. Then he sees the moon and transforms into a lusty busty girl, who is more interested in sexually harassing Kuromine than taking Shiragami home. The rest of the episode is a series of gags as the wolf-man-girl keeps seeing the moon and transforming back and forth, and for the rest of the show the male form never appears again. He is relegated to obscurity as his female form joins Kuromine’s obsessive harem, and we never hear about him trying to bring Shiragami home again.
There isn’t a gag or scene of note, not a trope or formula out of place; Actually, I Am… feels more like an exercise in the structure of a popular high school show than a high school show unique enough to actually be popular. The characters are so archetypal, the lines so canned, that it feels like no love or thought went into a single frame. I don’t think anime is becoming more profit-oriented and soulless as the years go by; newer works are successfully building off of old formulas using experience and a touch of creativity, creating technically proficient works that rival some of the old classics. But a lot of the dialogue now is about the cookie-cutter way in which shows are churned out without any care for the sake of turning an easy profit, and Actually, I Am… doesn’t give me a lot of ammunition to say otherwise.