Tomokazu SugitaYui OguraMiyu TomitaJuri Nagatsuma
Dogeza: I Tried Asking While Kowtowing
Also known as: Dogeza de Tanondemita
Medium: TV, series
Year: 2020
Writer/director: Shinpei Nagai
Original creator: Kazuki Funatsu
Actor: Akane Kaida, Ayaka Shimizu, Juri Nagatsuma, Kazuma Horie, Miyu Tomita, Saika Kitamori, Tomokazu Sugita, Yui Ogura
Keywords: anime, boobs
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Format: 12 three-minute episodes, plus a 13th OVA
Url: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=23542
Website category: Anime 2020
Review date: 21 October 2022
Dogeza I Tried Asking While Kowtowing
It sounded like amusing filth, but to my surprise I found it distasteful. There are some funny episodes, admittedly, but also some I disliked.
Our unseen hero keeps trying to persuade girls to flash their boobs or knickers. Bizarrely, this always works. He'll grovel before them in the dogeza position and keep arguing or pleading until they say "yes". Sometimes, this is quite an effective recipe for comedy, e.g. his teacher in remedial classes (ep.2) or the girl who immediately says "yes" and stoically exposes herself in ep.6, thus disconcerting the episode's actor, writer and director because that's not how the formula's supposed to go. "Is this girl okay? Has she not read the script?"
There are three elements to each episode:
(a) the silly conversation itself, ending in self-exposure.
(b) the full-length closing title theme.
(c) a closing art card with a voice-over from this week's voice actress, as a little epilogue.
That gives each episode two opportunities for ickiness. Most of the art card voice-overs are okay, but eps.1-2 left a nasty taste in the mouth. Having persuaded two ladies to undress for him, our anti-hero runs away afterwards as they try to talk with him about the next time they'll see him. Admittedly, that's sort of built into the premise. The guy's a zero-shame horndog who cares about nothing except his own serial satisfaction. Even so, though, that punchline turns two mildly amusing comedies into something a lot more unpleasant and I'm not surprised that the show soon realises its mistake and back-pedals away from it. The art card voice-overs from ep.3 onwards are innocuous.
Then we have the episodes themselves. On reflection, actually, it's just a little run in the second half that put me off the series... but when you're watching material like this, it only takes one misstep for the audience to reject the whole thing violently. Ep.7 has a girl who says "yes" then "no"... so our anti-hero calls that a "yes" and exposes her by force. Bloody hell. The ending voice-over tries to fix this, by having the girl respond by wanting to see our anti-hero's underwear. Nope, sorry. Not good enough. After that, ep.8 was too silly for me, with our lascivious anti-hero playing at being a baby who needs feeding.
Those are all the actively bad episodes... but that's still four out of the first eight, given the unpleasant end voice-overs in eps.1-2 and then objectionable main scenes in eps.7-8. After those, harmless-ish episodes like the dentist (ep.9) and the isekai elf (ep.13) are less likely to amuse. "Not funny" was my reaction. Ep.11 made me assume that our heroes were about to drive away without paying that poor petrol pump assistant, simply because I'd come to assume that they were scum. (They don't and she's very happy with their overpayment.) This is a shame, actually, because despite everything I still like about half of the episodes here. The teasing girl who says she can't show her knickers in ep.3 because she's not wearing any. The childhood friend from Osaka in ep.5. Nonetheless, though, one of my favourite episodes was the horror movie yandere who pretends to be our hero's little sister and then murders him in ep.12. Good. Do it again.