Yuu Yutani is a first-year highschool student who's seen as a good girl. However, to attract the attention of the school's popular, high-class disciplinary committee chairman Atori Mizutori, she begins to act like a delinquent.

When I first heard of Bad Girl, I briefly thought "Oh shit, a whole anime about one of the best bit characters in No More Heroes? Neat!" And then I watched the anime and discovered that I was in for 12 episodes of a soft-yuri romantic comedy. Not what I was hoping for, but hey, I can vibe with this.

Okay, that was mostly a joke, I didn't actually go in thinking that's what the show was, but still.

What's perhaps the most interesting about Bad Girl's first three episodes is how quickly it abandons its central premise. The central concept of the show is that smol bean Yuu Yutani is crushing hard on the head of the disciplinary committee, Atori Mizutori, and is concerned that she's too unremarkable to catch her crush's attention. When Atori approaches Yuu's delinquent-looking friend Suzu Suzukaze at the entrance gate of their school one morning, Yuu becomes fixated on the idea of adopting a "bad girl" persona so Atori will have to talk to her.

This plan fails immediately as Yuu is far too adorable to be a convincing delinquent. However, Yuu has now made enough of an impact on Atori that they can talk regularly, and hijinks between them and a few of their other classmates ensue. The best of these wacky endeavors include some wild misunderstandings around things like gift giving, Yuu accidentally watching puppy play porn after misinterpreting a recommendation from Suzu, and Yuu requesting degradation ASMR from Atori to cure a case of hiccups that she thinks will kill her.

The humor in each episode is more often derived from miscommunications between the central cast, rather than Yuu trying and failing to convince Atori that she's a delinquent as the opening minutes seem to set up, and I'm largely okay with this fake-out. Usually I find humor and situations derived from miscommunication in these kinds of romcoms to be trite and frustrating--I can't connect with characters or find value in their relationships if most of their interactions are just whatever dumbass misunderstandings that the writer feels will be funny or create the most drama. However, in Bad Girl, the miscommunications feel more genuine and believable.

It's always refreshing to watch a romcom where characters are expressive about their feelings for one another, in ways big and small. Of course, because all of these feelings and situations are so new and important to them, they stumble in the execution to humorous effect, like when Yuu accidentally propositions Atori to engage in puppy play after seeing that video, with the latter being extremely into the idea, and then Yuu is immediately overwhelmed by the situation she unintentionally created. A lot of the jokes are like this--cute, fun and grounded in young teenage girls being little idiots and in different places with their sexual proclivities and ability to express intimacy.

I'm also curious to see how the character dynamics develop as the show goes on. Yuu and Suzu have the "childhood friends whose bedroom windows look right into each other's rooms" trope going on, and Suzu has a crush on the oblivious Yuu. The third episode also sparks up an internal conflict in Atori, who seems to think she's less worthy of love and admiration than Yuu thinks she is. None of these lingering plot points feel incredibly weighty or like the show is set to offer some inspired insight into the human condition or something, but I appreciate that these characters are more than just vehicles for gags and have some degree of interiority.

That being said, not all of the jokes worked for me, and one character in particular feels especially one-dimensional. Rura Ruriha, a narcissist streamer, is introduced in the second episode. While the gag in that episode's stinger, where she turns to her online audience for intellectual validation and her army of simps instead respond that they're only watching her because she's hot, was funny, her whole "Tell me I'm pretty!" schtick to Yuu in the third episode was excruciating to sit through. There's a wealth of characters in anime who are memorable and hilarious because they're annoying by design, but this kind of character only works well in smaller doses, and Rura had overstayed her welcome by the halfway point of her proper introduction.

I also need to mention that even with the jokes landing more often than not, a lot of the other parts of Bad Girl are serviceable to forgettable. The voice acting is just solid enough not to get in the way of the jokes, the music is pretty good when it plays into a gag but otherwise largely unremarkable, the animation is limited without taking away from the comedy, and the opening and ending are fine enough. Bad Girl also has a lot of competition in the comedy, romcom and yuri divisions this season with titles like CITY The Animation, New Panty and Stocking, My Dress-Up Darling and Grand Blue's long-awaited second seasons, There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless... and See You Tomorrow at the Food Court, and I'm not sure how well it can stack up to them in the long run.

In a vacuum, these episodes of Bad Girl have solid jokes and characters with just enough depth to keep me interested in what they do next. Every character is a little weirdo dummy and I think seeing them continue to bounce off each other will both be entertaining and lead to a more complete characterization of each. While the first three episodes have tempered my expectations, I'm confident I'll have a fun time watching these characters feed into each other's quirky indecencies, at least whenever I find time to watch more between everything else I'm watching in this heavily packed season.