An anime with 12 episodes but that can be summed up thus: “No matter how tough a girl is, she is useless without a guy to protect her.” And so we are introduced to Ryoko Okami, a girl with years of boxing experience who nevertheless frequently finds herself captured or beaten up and in need of a rescue from her weak inexperienced love interest Ryoshi. His battle cry – “I’ll protect Ryoko!” – carries the implicit declaration: “Because she can’t protect herself!”
I’m sure fans will try to argue that the real moral of Okami-san and Her Seven Companions
There’s a story in there about the “Otogi Bank” club that Ryoko belongs to that helps people out with requests and the rest of the members of the team (the seven companions) and how they get involved in all kinds of funny scrapes and adventures. There’s also some would-be rapist guy from another school who turns up from time to time to kidnap Ryoko so she can be saved.
It’s a fun show, when you ignore the highly misogynistic message. Lots of silly situations and memorable characters and a ton of references to various fairy tales. I quite enjoyed myself. But having the “Women can’t protect themselves, they need a man!” message shoved relentlessly down my throat every episode has left me a little nauseous. I can’t believe they still make shows like that in this day and age.
Ah well, it’s entertainment. I’m not going to think too deeply about it. I got some laughs out of it, and at least it was better than most other tsundere-and-wimp series. If they make a season 2 I probably won’t watch it but still, good show.