The Winter 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Mr. Villain's Day Off

A certain man is, in his working life, a major leader in an alien organization bent on world destruction, the Evil League. But even bad guys need a chance to rest, and on his days off, he does just that – trying new ice cream flavors, geeking out over pandas, and awkwardly helping human children and his chief rival, the Ranger Dawn Red.

Mr. Villain's Day Off is based on a manga of the same name by Yuu Morikawa. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

There's nothing inherently “wrong” with Mr. Villain's Day Off. The animation looks fine and the voice acting is competent. Everything is easy to follow and makes sense inside the world they are building. However, that doesn't change the fact that I was honestly bored to tears with this one. More than once, I checked the remaining time hoping in vain that it was almost over. I never laughed (and only smiled once at the first utterance of the “strange man who is not our father” line).

The big issue here stems from the fact that there is no story in this episode. Rather, what we get is a collection of random events. Oh, sure. We get a bit of character development throughout. We see he likes pandas and is generally a good guy on his days off—helping directionally-challenged people find their way and lost kids find their parents—but that hardly makes us invested in him or the world around him.

Rather, the entire anime lives or dies on how funny it is. There is one main joke—and if that one doesn't make you laugh all the subordinate jokes will leave you less than amused. So, do you think the idea of a Power Rangers villain doing random, normal things on his day off is the height of comedy? Then this show is for you—because that's all there is to it.

All in all, I'm sure there are people who both love Japanese superheroes and just want to zone out and watch some lighthearted fluff. Sadly, I am not one of them.

I was hoping that this would fill the My New Boss Is Goofy-shaped hole in my life. Given how much I enjoyed the source manga, it didn't seem too much to ask. But something about how this is adapted isn't working for me. Perhaps it's the glacial pacing, which comes across as "relaxed" in a still, silent medium, or maybe it's the way that some of the background noises made my skin crawl unpleasantly, but whatever the case, this dragged and left me feeling that it would have worked better as a short.

That was my initial concern, given the manga's format, which relies on short chapters with moderate punchlines. The two central jokes are that Mr. Villain isn't all that evil off the clock and that Ranger Red Dawn has no skills out of costume. From there, the plot uses repeating gags to tell its story: Mr. Villain loves pandas and other cute animals, is kind to children but still feels compelled to destroy Earth, and likes ice cream. Sometimes, he bumps into Red and they get along because he's not working and can just be chill. That's it, and while it can be pleasant to experience, it isn't quite enough to fill twenty-three minutes.

I'm also very torn on Mr. Villain's voice. Shintarō Asanuma's deep, resonant tones are excellent, but the deliberation with which he delivers his lines isn't quite working for me. It makes each utterance feel unnaturally drawn out, which may turn out to be on purpose: we hear much more of his internal monologue than any dialogue with other characters, so we could be getting him trying to convince himself that he still has to carry out the plan of human destruction. Given his treatment of the two little kids he picks up (or rather, who throw themselves in his path), that feels like a definite possibility; it may not be just animals he finds adorable and worth saving. His offhand comment about leaving the destruction of his favorite convenience store for last could also be seen as feeding into this idea that he's putting on an evil act rather than believing in the mission. Still, it doesn't help with the pacing, and I think I'll be sticking with the manga on this one. It does work better on paper.

Man, I wanted to love this one. I'm a sucker for Super Sentai sendups in my anime, and I've been fond of the recent trend of "slice-of-life stories starring the villainous monsters that the Rangers fight every week" shows. Mr. Villain's Day Off should be a complete slam-dunk, then. It stars an adorably grumpy Mr. Villain who just wants to use his precious free time to stare at pandas and eat his damned convenience store snacks in peace, though fate seems determined to make him best friends with the incredibly sweet and hopelessly sense-of-direction lacking Ranger Red. What's not to love?

Well, for me, it's all in the execution. For one, this is one of those very laid-back comedies where each of the skits that make up each episode all feel twice as long as they are because of how…much…time…it takes…to...get…through…even…one…scene. I've said this before, but while I can respect the iyashikei type of anime that just want to chill and savor the vibes of any given moment for as long as humanly possible, my ADHD brain does not jive with that scene. There are funny jokes, too, like when Warumono-san becomes enraged at losing out on his favorite seasonal treat at the convenience store, or the way that he freaks out and rockets away if he has the unfortunate luck to encounter a coworker out in the wild (#Relatable). However, these funny moments feel few and far between simply because of the episode's pacing.

Also, the show seems to be aiming for a one-two punch by targeting the ASMR crowd, since Shintarō Asanuma's narration—not to mention every single sound effect in the episode—is cranked up to 11 in the volume mix. When this guy makes breakfast, we hear the crack-n'-slurp of the eggs, the sizzle of the Toast, and the scraping of the whisk against the metal bowl, and it's all just a bit overstimulating for yours truly.

Still, this is by no means a bad show, and if I found myself in the proper mood and remembered to watch the show on my crappy USB speakers instead of my nice headphones, I can still imagine having a nice time with Mr. Villain's Day Off. I'd prefer a show with more pep in its step and less inclination to get the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up—or whatever it is the ASMR crowd gets out of listening to a guy make French Toast, but, like, super close—but I'm sure this will round out plenty of viewers watchlists with their seasonal "Cozy Comfort" requirements.

I hate saying a comedy should have been a short because it feels like the ultimate backhanded compliment. "Oh, yeah, the show's alright; I just wish there was less of it." Yet some premises inevitably wind up in that reverse Goldilocks zone, where they're funny enough to be entertaining, but not funny enough to survive the repetition necessary to reach 22 minutes of material. That's where this show winds up: a nice, sensible chuckle at seven minutes, but a tedious sit at 20.

It doesn't help that we've already had quite a few shows in this genre space. Series like Miss Kuroitsu From the Monster Development Department or Love After World Domination were able to mine plenty of gags out of pairing Super Sentai shenanigans with mundane comedy, but they also brought elements of office comedies or romcoms to the table. Here, the gag is that this evil dude likes pandas and ice cream, and we repeat that joke about eight times to steeply diminishing returns. Similarly, the bit about his enemy Red Ranger being bad with directions is mildly amusing the first time, but it falls flat when he pops up multiple times in subsequent skits to reiterate it. This could work, if the gags escalated, branched out in creative ways, or were delivered with a deliberate awkwardness, but it's all too neutral and soft-spoken for any of that. So, if you don't find the very concept of a Saturday morning cartoon villain going to the zoo or mall hilarious, everything after the first eye catch is stultifying.

There are some ways this could get better, though. The episode establishes multiple side characters that could provide more varied laughs and character-driven humor if integrated into Mr. Villain's bits. There are a couple of darker jokes, like Mr. Villain patting a pair of lost kids on the head while kindly thinking about how he'll wipe out the Earth before they make it to adulthood, that were just out of nowhere enough to be funny. This might pick back up if they can have more stuff like that.

Even then, I fear this may just not be suited to a format larger than bite-sized. If this episode had been split up into three, sprinkled on as a bit of fluffy comedy to end each weekend, it'd work much better. As-is, it feels like trying to eat a suitcase of cotton candy on your own.