[Atuhor's Nose: Another double feature day! Enjoy, everyone!]


One Valentine's Day, young part-time arcade employee Renji Kusakabe notices a small foreign girl, Lily Baker, struggling to win a stuffed toy from a crane game. Three hours later, after finishing his shift, she's still at it, but the toy remains unmoved. Feeling sorry for her, he decides to help, and in one skillful try, he wins the toy, which he then hands to the girl. Startled by this unexpected gesture, she looks at Renji with suspicion. Flustered, Renji hastily tells her it's a Valentine's Day gift. Little does he know, in her home country of England, Valentine's Day is traditionally when boys give girls gifts along with a confession of love.

What do you do when you have an anime that stars a native English speaking girl with a lot of lines? You hire American-born Sally Amaki, who you might also recognize as Betsy from Kaguya-sama, Carol from Tomo-chan is a Girl, Kiriko from Overwatch 2 and Peni Parker in Marvel Rivals. Given how much of the comedy and cuteness of Cultural Exchange With a Game Centre Girl revolves around the linguistic barrier that separates Renji and Lily, this was a fantastic casting decision. This is a show that'd work a lot less for both Japanese and English-speaking audiences alike if Lily and Renji didn't actually have to figure out ways to communicate with each other. Could I snark about Lily's English being a little all over the place? Sure, but once you hear her mother try to offer her a "cuppa", you'll understand how much worse things could've been.

It's always nice to hear Sally Amaki. Even if her attempts at an English accent are...questionable, the rest of her delivery as Lily is precious enough. In concept, it could be cute enough to watch her perform a whole short series here it's just a cute British loli playing around in a Japanese arcade, plugging away at crane games and blurting out "Bloody hell!" as adorably as possible. Maybe the others in the cast glimpsed in the OP could join in later, and "Cute Girls Playing Cute Arcade Games" could take off. This isn't even the first premiere this season where Street Fighter is glimpsed at the beginning, and we also got an unexpected Jashin-chan Dropkick cameo.

Unfortunately, the show that Game Centre Girl is interested in being at the outset here is both a bit more ambitious and a good bit more prone to chafing under that ambition. I won't get too much into the issues obviously inherent in Renji inadvertently ending up in a courtship with Lily, as much of it so far has been played for the "precocious crush" angle. Renji's just trying his best to be nice and, at least partially on account of a language barrier, doesn't seem to be quite aware of how deep in he's getting with Lily thus far. Hopefully that aspect of the series works as a way for both of them to grow and learn overall, on account of that "cultural exchange" element in the title.

Rather, the more pressing issue is that a simple communication barrier just isn't enough to sustain a full episode's worth of interactions between these characters as they putter around an arcade. At least in more standard CGDCT shows, there might be odd little conversations to lend personality and flavour to the goings-on. Here, our two leads can barely talk to one another, so there's just a whole lot of repeated basic sentences over them playing arcade games. Lily figuring out UFO catchers and discovering an aptitude for not-House of the Dead (featuring Jill Valentine?) are slightly more compelling than her kinda hovering around Renji, fawning over him and waiting for him to figure out what her emotional intentions are.

In any case, it looks nice enough, and even if most of the arcade games are unlicensed stand-ins, some are still neat enough to see. And maybe the energy will increase once more cast members show up to shake up the dynamics. And maybe even further, the leads will actually learn to communicate and the cultural exchange part can drive things more earnestly. I'd really like to find out that the cozy candy-coloured artwork and nostalgia baiting aren't gonna end up being the only things this show has going for it.