Mysterious Girlfriend X is based upon the manga series. The anime is thirteen episodes long with an OVA that was released with the 9th volume of the manga. The plot follows Tsubaki, an average teenage male student that of course wonders about sexual relations now that he has found out about them. One day, Urabe, a transfer student, arrives and sits next to him. She is extremely odd as she sleeps through breaks, laughs out loud for no reason and distances herself from everyone. Through chance, Tsubaki returns back to his classroom after school to find Urabe still sleeping. He wakes her up and after she leaves, he notices that she was drooling and left some drool behind before deciding... to lick it.
The drool (or saliva as it is also known) ends up being a staple of the story and it is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of oddness. Through developments that cannot be explained, Tsubaki and Urabe end up in a relationship but it’s not your typical relationship. The anime explores the oddness of the situation. Tsubaki is effectively addicted to Urabe’s saliva, given that he will literally get sick if he doesn’t get some everyday.
Urabe is constantly portrayed as having some sort of ability. Ignoring the saliva thing, she has some sort of obsession with scissors. She keeps a pair of scissors on her at all times and is extremely skilled at cutting things up with it. Spinning into this are the dreams that Tsubaki constantly has that have him and Urabe in it. Naturally, these dreams reflect his desires and yet you can’t help but feel that there is definitely more to this than at first glance. All this makes the title of “mysterious girlfriend” extremely apt.
To be honest, the whole saliva thing that the pair has going on can be uncomfortable and to weird to accept. We’re talking about literally putting saliva into a tube for Tsubaki to drink out of and there are constantly scenes of them putting fingers in each other’s mouths. Tsubaki himself isn’t the more innocent of people too. He does things that can be creepy and definitely does not paint him in a good light. Although since the rest of the anime can be so strange, other characters kind of accept it as normal like it’s no big deal and move on.
Despite all the strange and bizarre things going on, Tsubake and Urabe’s relationship is strangely enticing. It might be because that it is so atypical yet they go through the similar stages of a normal relationship, just in a more unfamiliar way. Tsubaki goes from knowing nothing about Urabe, to slowly finding out about her and progressing through the stages such as opening her up, using their first names, hugging and kissing. It’s quite sweet and satisfying when you start to see that Urabe has strong feelings too, despite her cold outward personality. Seeing her warm up to Tsubaki more and actually showing it, in such a natural way in such an unnatural relationship, feels like strides of progress are being made.
By the time the halfway mark comes, Urabe is not as mysterious anymore as you can roughly gather why Urabe does the things she does with her saliva. However, she is still weird and the attempts of Tsubaki trying to get closer to Urabe, despite them being boyfriend and girlfriend, is engrossing enough to keep your attention. Understandably, Tsubaki gets jealous or annoyed whenever other boys talk about Urabe, given that they had kept their relationship a secret. It never gets out of hand and feels like a natural part of their relationship. Urabe on the other hand can be quite scary as you can’t really predict her reactions.
The back half of the season has Tsubaki and Urabe go through some tests but naturally, their love wins out. Despite the slow build up of most of the season though, the ending is a bit weak. The final episode has a slow start and then the closing scenes feel insubstantial compared to what we had before. It doesn’t do much to close off or give the viewers anything concrete on the future of Tsubaki and Urabe, although it heavily implies that they’re happy and won’t break up.
The OVA takes place during a local festival in which Tsubaki and Urabe visit together. It does what it does best and gives us more of what made the anime good. At the end of it, you’d wish that there were more episodes. One thing to note is that despite the anime being animated and released in 2012, the aesthetics calls back to the style of older anime. It also nails the atmosphere with its hollow and eerie music that emphasizes the mysteriousness of Urabe’s actions.
Overall, Mysterious Girlfriend X has a great atmosphere. Its plot has an unusual key element being the whole saliva sharing thing. It also normalizes a lot of creepy characteristics. Nevertheless, it keeps its themes consistent, drawing you in with the mysteries of its characters in the first half, before showing off a unique and relatively innocent and pure relationship that has the characters overcome ironically common obstacles.
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