First Impressions – Jiisan Baasan Wakagaeru

The previews are coming fast and furious now – it’s a big season, if nothing else. Jiisan Baasan Wakagaeru is a series I had decent expectations for, albeit with some caveats. Gekkou is yet another studio with almost no track record – this schedule is absolutely littered with them – and what they’ve done is hardly impressive. But the premise – Ojii-san and Obaa-san suddenly turn into twenty-something versions of themselves – had kind of an appealing old school-meets-trendy sound to it.

While the source (web) manga here gets pretty decent review scores, my main generator of interest is really the seiyuu (which is pretty rare for me). Miki Shinichirou and Noto Mamiko are nowhere close to either age they’re playing here (Miki at least almost splits the difference, at 55), but they are both terrific actors and I was curious to see how’d they’d finesse that. Miki especially is a favorite of mine, one of the few voice actors good enough to elevate a series just by his presence in the cast. To my ear both sound more comfortable playing the youngsters than the octogenarians, which they do a lot more of in the premiere anyway.

On balance I didn’t find this premiere to be especially compelling, unfortunately. I guess it being basically a gag manga format shouldn’t have surprised me given that the source is Pixiv, but the problem is that a lot of the gags didn’t really work for me. That whole bit with the granddaughter being hot for Gramps was cringe to start with, and was really beaten into the ground. On balance I’d say the jokes batted about .400 for me, which in baseball is MVP territory but for comedy not so much.

On  the plus side, I definitely liked the B-part better than the A-part. Not so much the sports festival, but the aftermath with the granddaughter and the grandson of one of the old couple’s friends was cute. Miki’s Shouzou-san reflecting back on how he had to fight to marry Ine-san because his father wanted an arranged marriage (and the granddaughter’s disbelief at that) was the most engaging segment of the episode. I’ll give this another ep or two, certainly – not exactly sold at this point, but prepared to be convinced.