Sara Talks Anime

I feel like everyone should know right here right now that the only things I had read regarding the show before watching it with the synopsis it has in Crunchyroll’s Summer 2025 anime lineup. However, after reading the post Anime Feminist made about the previous episode, I was starting to see some of the sparkle get removed from this premise.

“B-but surely all of this stuff that makes it seem like it’s making an age gap romance is just from cultural misunderstandings and won’t actually reflect into them getting together!” I tell myself. And, yeah, that how it seems to be. Renji doesn’t seem to reciprocate Lily’s feelings, at least if I’m reading the room correctly.

Bloody hell, the only reason Lily appears to be falling for Renji is because of the initial misunderstanding that caused the events of this series to begin in the first place. However, once it became apparent through this episode that Lily truly does have a crush on Renji and this isn’t a purely platonic thing, this series has officially moved into thin ice territory.

The decision about whether or not I continue watching this series is gonna rely solely on how Renji reacts. It’s clear that this more romantic stuff is how Lily interprets it due to not being as familiar with Japanese culture.

It’s also nice to see that she can speak Japanese, though English is probably used more commonly due to the fact that is the language she is fluent in, with her being from England and all.

In fact, we have another cultural misunderstanding to end this episode, with a narrator saying that the two were going on their first date. I blame Lily for the narrator.

And I want to make it clear here and now: I absolutely don’t support age gap romances in fiction unless it’s clear that it’s a one-sided crush or there’s historical context to explain why a kid and an adult are having those kinds of feelings for each other.

If this series plays its cards right, it could easily be the former. And I’ve already seen something that could fall into the latter, if being in a fantasy world that’s clearly based on that historical time counts as historical context. Dunno for certain, though.

But with the fact that Cultural Exchange with a Game Centre Girl takes place in the modern world, however, it’s making me less willing to go out and recommend this series to people while this series is actually airing. If I do end up watching this entire series (same person who watched all of A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring and Fluffy Paradise, by the way), then I’ll see how it played its cards and determine whether or not to recommend it based off of that.

And if I drop the series part way through? Then I don’t think it properly played its cards to make it worth recommending to others. Now, I don’t know how well my recommendations would work, considering some of the stuff I have watched all the way through, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to try!

ADDITIONAL POSTS ABOUT CULTURAL EXCHANGE WITH A GAME CENTRE GIRL:

• Cultural Exchange with a Game Centre Girl Episode 1 – “Boy Meets the Game Centre Girl”
• Cultural Exchange with a Game Centre Girl Episode 3 – “Where Is Your Brother?”