YMMV / In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Hana's reassurance to Konoha regarding Tsubaki knowing the truth is up for interpretation. Is she trying to reassure Konoha that coming clean with Tsubaki was the right thing to do, or as Konoha points out, is she trying to reassure herself because she's having second thoughts about her decision?
  • What exactly is Uikyou and Kikyou's relationship? Even though their behavior would imply a sisterly bond, neither the anime nor the manga makes it clear on whether this is the case. Even series design manager Takashi Kojima doesn't believe the two are actually related.
• Awesome Music: The OP, "Highlight, Highlight", performed by the peggies. The song has an uplifting, cheery, and feel-good vibe to it, which the lyrics embody allowing yourself to shine even when faced with bewilderment and things foreign to you. According to the group, this song also represents some of their own experiences, especially during their time in school.
• Base-Breaking Character: Of all the girls, Sazanka seems to have the most divisive reception. She's either a hilarious little brat or an annoying bitch whose downright obsession with Tsubaki wears out its welcome fast.
• Critical Dissonance: Reception to the series among fans and critics was divided, to say the least. While fans of the series praised its animation, characters, and its comedic and playful story, critics on Anime News Network were less than kind, criticizing the premise of "girls never seeing a man in their life" as contrived and uncreative, and the subsequent jokes stemming from it as unfunny. They also targeted the series' art style, taking issue with the young appearances of the characters and their choice of outfits.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While the majority of characters are relegated to supporting or background roles, a few have garnered some popularity of their own:
  • Mokuren gained some popularity among both anime and manga fans alike, due to her calm, sweet, and big-sister/motherly-like personality.
  • Rindou was received quite well by viewers, who found her shyness endearing and adorable. These feelings intensified once she began to show her face.
  • All three members of Team Boar - Dokudami, Aogiri, Shakuyaku - were received well almost immediately upon their debut due to their comedic antics, particularly involving their No Sense of Direction and idiocy, comparing them to that of Roronoa Zoro or Ryouga Hibiki.
  • Benisumomo was received well by fans both in Episodes 2 and 10, in part due to her cool, laid-back demeanor, while as the latter episode depicted, the hidden kinder side of her.
• Fan Nickname: Kunoichi Tsubaki, Teasing Master Takagi-san, and When Will Ayumu Make His Move? have all been jokingly referred to as the "Forehead Trilogy" by fans, due to them being Sōichirō Yamamoto's first three works to receive anime adaptations, as well as referring to his Forehead of Doom art style.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Members of 4chan's /a/ imageboard responded to the series far more positively than mainstream audiences did, whose reception was only lukewarm at best. On /a/, the series quickly gained a fanbase, with threads being made even months after the anime, and later the manga, had concluded.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Cl-Overworked ^note With In The Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki being another anime animated by CloverWorks, many fans expressed concern about whether the animation studio was overworking itself as well as whether the animation quality would suffer, due to the large number of titles they either had or planned to animate during the Spring 2022 anime season.
  • Forehead/Forehead Trilogy/Forehead-verse ^note A common in-joke among fans of Yamamoto's other works involves pointing out his Forehead of Doom art style. This is most apparent with fellow sister series, Teasing Master Takagi-san and When Will Ayumu Make His Move?, the three of these works being jokingly dubbed the "Forehead Trilogy/Forehead-verse" for reasons stated above.
  • Tsubaki is a child/baby/chibi/Isekai'ed Yao-momo ^note Not long after the second promotional video's release, many people took note of the similarity between Tsubaki's appearance to that of Momo Yaoyorozu from My Hero Academia, specifically their hairstyle. As such, people began making jokes that revolved around either Tsubaki being a younger Yaoyorozu or Yaoyorozu being in another world.
  • The Barefoot Loli Ninja Show ^note  It didn't take the internet long to realize the manga and anime ticked a lot of niche fetish boxes, certainly not helped by the anime going a little extra on the foot focus and putting the girls in "interesting" positions at times.
  • Team Boar is a team full of Zoros ^note Upon Team Boar's debut in the anime, many viewers began to draw comparisons between them and One Piece's Roronoa Zoro due to their shared poor sense of direction, going as far as to say that the team is simply Zoro split into three. This is furthered even more considering Aogiri is a sword wielder with a missing eye.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Episode 8 of the anime can be seen as this, especially for those that disliked Sazanka as a character due to her obsession with Tsubaki. Presenting her a lonely, aloof problem child who was hated by almost everyone in the past until Tsubaki reached out to her with kindness was received warmly amongst fans, as it provided some much-needed backstory for Sazanka and as to exactly why she's so affectionate to the latter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: With as expansive as the cast is, this was inevitable with the anime adaptation due to the limited amount of episodes. Some teams that got spotlight chapters in the manga had their chapters either greatly modified to fit or skipped over entirely in the anime, essentially making them even more of a Bit Character than they already were. For example, much of the material from Team Rabbit's spotlight chapter was greatly omitted from the anime, so by the time they make a proper introduction in Episode 11, it only adapts the last four pages out of the entire chapter, leaving them with little characterization compared to what the manga presents.

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