Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless is a twelve episode anime that’s based on the manga series. We’re introduced to Tanaka, who is listless, or if you want another term. He’s always tired and sleeps a lot, he lacks energy and enthusiasm for anything and everything, it’s a surprise that he even manages to make it to school. To be honest, if this was someone in real life and not an anime, they probably have some sort of health issue.
Anyway, as is usual for these types of people, Tanaka is blessed with having a great friend, Ohta. Ohta is like the opposite of Tanaka, being a lot more open in personality, taller and proficient in physical activities. Ohta constantly looks out for Tanaka, from carrying him from place to place when required, to making sure he eats. Eventually, Tanaka is joined by several other classmates who befriends him for one reason or another and his life becomes somewhat lively and eventful, as least more than what Tanaka himself would prefer.
This is a comedy slice-of-life anime, where we see Tanaka’s school life and how he manages it while trying to be as lazy as possible. He doesn’t respond much to people, sometimes not at all. As a result, Tanaka himself can be a tough character to like since he takes the listlessness to the extreme. Having him be so indifferent, bordering on unkind and uncaring, does not do him any favors. While there are a few scenarios where this is funny, it’s not the majority of the time.
Tanaka often doesn’t make much sense or jumps logic. Most of these are misses and paint him as weird, but every so often, they’re a gem and are extremely funny. Naturally, these situations causes all kinds of confusion with the other characters (other than Ohta since he’s used to it). That being said, the supporting characters are all colorful in their own way, with their unique personality traits that far from normal themselves.
There’s not much of a progression in terms of story, it’s pretty much just whatever comes to Tanaka’s life. He doesn’t really do much himself, although whenever we learn a tidbit about himself that we didn’t know before, it’s usually something surprising. However, his lethargic demeanour rubs off on the tone of the anime as well. It makes the pacing feel slow, and it tends to linger on a particular silent scene for longer than necessary, so it starts to feel a bit awkward before moving on. This even carries onto the aesthetics of the anime, where it uses relatively simpler designs.
Each episode has a singular theme that carries it through but most of the time, there isn’t enough content to justify the whole episode being dedicated to it. Once the anime introduces a few recurring characters is when things become just that bit livelier and more palatable. With that said, most of the developments are still predictable that’s been done to death in other slice-of-life animes. Things like school festival, or a trip to the pool, they’re nothing special.
Overall, Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless is somewhat average. There are parts where it shines but on the whole, Tanaka himself ends up being too lazy and listless to pull it off as the protagonist. It ends up causing the pacing to be too slow with not much happening during a lot of the scenes, so that the atmosphere and tone becomes lethargic instead.
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