Kenichi SuzumuraKaori ShimizuSayaka HorinoI Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying
I Can't Understand What My Husband is Saying: 2nd Thread
Episode 1 also reviewed here: Anime 1st episodes 2015: I
Also known as: Danna ga Nani o Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken 2-sure-me
Medium: TV, series
Year: 2015
Director: Shinpei Nagai
Original creator: Cool-kyo Shinja
Actor: Kenichi Suzumura, Yukari Tamura, Daisuke Tonosaki, Kaori Shimizu, Rie Kugimiya, Ryoko Shintani, Sayaka Horino, Toshifumi Sakai, Yui Horie
Keywords: I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying, anime
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Format: 13 three-minute episodes
Url: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=16654
Website category: Anime 2015
Review date: 6 August 2015
can't understand what my husband is saying
I prefer it to season one, but they're both good. It's a lovely little series, albeit also a very short one.
Hajime is an otaku, who to the astonishment of everyone (including himself) has a wife, Kaoru. She's not a nerd. She doesn't even speak Nerd. She's an ordinary office lady, but somehow she and Hajime have a strong marriage and are happy together. They love each other, they make allowances and they worry about things.
It's a comedy. Hajime's geek mindset is good for laughs. However I think that kind of gag has taken a slight back seat this year, being replaced instead by gentle relationship stuff that's happy just to spend time with its characters. This makes it perhaps less funny, but in compensation we have a warm, happy series that's surprisingly accurate and detailed in its portrayal of a marriage. Sometimes I'd even call it well observed. Hajime and Kaoru don't take their relationship for granted, which is of course a good rule for anyone, and I liked their analysis of, say, their feelings about Kaoru's pregnancy in ep.11 or the possible consequences of Hajime trying to become more normal in ep.12.
It's interleaved into season one, by the way. The first ten episodes don't mention Kaoru's pregnancy because at that point it hasn't happened yet. I don't think chronological order matters in this series, especially given all the flashbacks, but here's a table for anyone who was thinking of watching it all in chronological order.
ummm.
...no, on second thoughts it really doesn't matter. Plot isn't an issue. Wikipedia has some episode numbers, i.e. ep.1 is really 7.5, etc. but the only thing you's want to know is that the last three episodes of season two continue on from the season one finale, i.e. Kaoru's pregnant in them.
There's a supporting cast, which I'll call the Gang. It's hard to get much of a feel for everyone in the Gang in four minutes, especially since they're just random and fairly normal friends of Kaoru and Hajime. I think they've all been paired off by this point, although Miki's not too keen on being the crush of Hajime's crossdressing gay-manga-writing younger brother, Mayomata. (All this pairing-off is of interest in itself, by the way. Romance in most anime and indeed in most fiction tends to focus on the getting-together, but this show is fundamentally about a marriage and so has a supporting cast of couples for thematic counterpoint.)
Anyway, it'll be easier to tell everyone apart if you've watched season one recently, but to its credit the show eventually gives us lots of help by dedicating entire episodes to the supporting cast. Ep.6 is an adaptation of spin-off manga 'My Girlfriend without Wasabi' and tells us about Kaoru's friend Rino and her husband Nozomu. (They're great.) Ep.8 tells us how Mayotama got that way and is kind of sad. When he was younger, he didn't even like manga and anime. He just wanted his brother Hajime to pay attention to him. That said, though, I think Moyotama was bringing his own special issues to the party, since now he draws boys' love manga with a Hajime look-a-like as the hero and has been known to offer to give Hajime a hand job. (That was in season one. I think he learned quite quickly that that didn't make him popular, though.)
There are multiple prequel/spin-off manga, by the way. Another is 'Metsuko ni Yoroshiku', which is about Kaoru's high school senpai.
I particularly liked ep.9, in which we meet Hajime's parents. They have a low opinion of him. His mother could nag for her country, while his dad thinks Hajime's so-called marriage must be someone pulling his leg. It's funny, but at the same time it's got the interesting character touch of Kaoru being really happy to be there with them.
I do like this show. Its subject matter is more mature than usual for anime, despite being full of nerd culture jokes and people who are childish and/or weirdos. Stable adult relationships. It's a rather good study of one, between two mismatched people who are nonetheless making a success of it. It's a happy anime to watch.