Feb 1, 2025
Make no mistake, this show is not the "cute girls doing cute things" moe genre show with an otaku culture backing other reviewers seem to be chalking it up as. Vtuber Nandaga is an (albeit easy-going) Girl's love harem show which documents the writers developing fetishes in gruesome and delicious detail. If you are titillated or fascinated by adult baby-mother roleplay or feet (more on that later), you will likely get a little bit more out of this show than the average viewer. Just for the record, I'm not into that stuff (I'm normal! 😅), but the sheer presence of perversion is what gets me
...
going.
When first watching this show, I compared it most closely to Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete, the excellent sadomasochistic Yuri show starring a fangirl-turned dominatrix from a few seasons back, but this one undoubtedly plays the fetish-bait a little bit closer to the vest. Yes, the meat and potatoes of this show is a funny but at-times meandering comedy about a downtrodden vtuber finding new success after passing out drunk on stream, inventing for herself a new, more frank and vulgar persona. The novelty and personality of the main character, Awayuki (alter ego: Shuwa-chan) drives the show for the first few episodes, and it has a lot of legs, guided by well-cast voice acting from Sakura Ayane (if you don't know her, she's in like everything. She's Ochaco from MHA and the main girl from Charlotte). After the amazement at the premise (which is surely why you started watching in the first place) starts to wear off, a cast of supporting characters are introduced, at first falling into the trite archetypes of every anime from the last 20 years. Each character gets their very own focus episode, and while the referential style of comedy always elicits a chortle, it’s not really the type to get a lot of belly laughs.
The show takes a turn around episode 5, however, when the next generation of Vtubers debut. This seems to be around the time in the light novels when Nanato Nana really hit her stride (and put her hand firmly down her pants). Much of the otaku referential humor in this episode is traded in for referential fetish humor (an exciting development, I know). One of the characters is a girl so obsessed with the main character, her greatest wish is to have sex the woman's uvula. Another is a 30-year-old woman who simply insists she is a baby, and that every chatter is her mother. From this point in the story, even the originally "straight" characters take some turns, with one girl who originally filled the "innocent" role forcibly dressing up our heroine as a baby come episode 6.
Despite this, the show is determined to never be bogged down by it's own perversion, and keeps a brisk pace through these portions. Editing is a strong point for this show, and while it's not anything revolutionary, it has a strong enough style and direction to keep the viewer well engaged. The Editing also provides for the aforementioned foot-based fanservice (foot service?). I'm not sure when it started, but it seems that Vtubers have become a bastion for foot fetishists of all stripes. Maybe it's something about the fact that it's a relatively innocuous inclusion to the untrained eye, but huge-name EN-Vtubers like Gawr Gura and Amelia Watson (rip) had live 2d bare feet models added to their arsenal around a year ago, and regularly "put their feet up" during more casual streams. Vtuber Nandaga keeps this tradition alive, and the only real eye-candy the show has to offer is in the form of foot close ups.
The show's art is at times stiff and uninspired, but I honestly don't blame it. While the pastels are nothing new, it's not like this show is out to change your life. Further, I was perhaps more fascinated by how they kept this show to a reasonable budget. Almost every game the characters play is fully licensed, and further, every ED is a karaoke version of a real song (including the excellent "Odoru Akachan Ningen" from welcome to the N.H.K.). The licensing budget is huge for what is obviously not a huge studio show, and it shows from time to time in the poor keying. A lot of this is made up for by the use of live2d for the streaming portions of the show, with each model only running about a grand each. I found this approach to cost cutting a pretty interesting and resourceful.
Overall, this show is a good watch if you are deep enough into Vtubing, otaku, or fetish culture. Again, it breaks no new ground, but I had a great time watching it, and it rarely feels like all that much of a slog.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
