Chu-Bra Episode 1 Review

The first episode of Chu-Bra is out for paid Crunchyroll Anime/All-Access members and after watching the first episode, it looks like it’ll either be really popular or really polarizing depending on your comfort level with stereotypical pervy behavior coming from an unconventional lead character.

The animation is fluid and above average owing to Zexcs and Gansis with special care taken to animate bustline movement for certain characters depending on cup size.

As far as the story goes, the episode establishes Yako Jinguji and Haruka Shiraishi as supporting characters investigating rumors that Nayu participates in compensated dating after seeing her interaction with an older male who is thought to be her sugar daddy, leading up to situations and imagination sequences like these:

The episode is full of these sequences for comedic effect, but where I feel it goes overboard is when they use the trope to excess, making it a chore to sit through and wearing thin quickly since the show is trying to repeatedly shock and titillate at the same time.

The show also continues the recent trend of censoring certain shots with shots of Nayu’s skirt with errant censoring for while other scenes aren’t censored at all as shown below:

I’m not going out of my way to recommend the show, but I’ll suggest it to those that like pantsu anime. Nayu is a cute character owing to her glasses and disposition, while Yako and Haruka are merely serving as her foils without any real development yet.  I did enjoy how the VA for Takato-sensei busted out her critique of Mizuno-sensei’s choice to ride a bike to school wearing a business suit with a skirt in pretty decent English, as that just came out of left field and hope for more offhanded remarks from her.

Hopefully the second episode will start to expand on everyone’s motivations, but I’m not going to dismiss it entirely either. I’ll just keep watching and hope it gets better story and character wise.

Rating: 3.5/5

Liked:

• Bouncy OP/ED themes
• Animation is above average

Disliked:

• Certain scenes involving Nayu take on an overtly voyeuristic view that can make some uncomfortable