What if mythical creatures – like werewolves, phoenixes, and yehtis- were real and interbred with humans? In that scenario, you might end up with a world like the one in The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague. While there are still many “normal” humans, a decent portion of the population are humanoid “descendants” of fantastical creatures. The male main character, Himuro, is descended from Yuki Ona (‘Snow Woman”), a Japanese spirit of snow and ice.
The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague follows Himuro as he begins a new job at an office and falls in love with a human colleague named Fuyutsuki. The anime is very cute and sweet, driven by soft character interactions rather than action or intense drama. Here is my review for this endearing 2023 anime.
Visuals: 8/10
The character designs are not super original, but they don’t have to be in an office/slice-of-life anime. As long as they are reasonably memorable, it’s only natural for them to look a bit bland, always wearing suits and having a limited number of colors and styles of hair. I think the characters in Ice Guy look pretty good. I especially like the design for Fuyutsuki. Her chestnut hair, calm eyes, and short, petite build are beautiful.
What really helps these characters stand out are their face expressions. They are exaggerated just enough to be comical at times and adorable at other times. When Himuro blushes, for example, it melts my heart. The usual expressions on a character’s face help give you a “vibe” for what kind of personality they have. For instance, Fuyutsuki’s eyes are relatively heavily lidded and her small mouth is inexpressively flat, showing that she doesn’t have a lot of extraverted self-expression.
The way the eyes are animated is also an important visual aspect to mention. It contributes to the face expressions, too. Characters’ eyes are some flavor of 3D when they move, but it looks very natural. These eyes move constantly, tracking the face and eyes of the other character they are facing. This unusual animation choice was slightly off-putting at first, but I soon grew to like it. Visual tracking is interesting to me.
(It was difficult to find a gif or a clip that shows what I mean about the eye movement. But if you watch this video and pay attention to Fuyutsuki’s eyes around 0:45, you should see it.)
The other visual elements include lighting, shading, backgrounds, and scenery. All of these were average at worst and excellent at best. I especially like the beautiful lighting during some scenes. The animation is never very smooth, and not the most detailed, but it’s not an anime that needs much movement to be decent. Excessive detail isn’t needed either for such an easygoing, casual anime.
I think the budget for Ice Guy was pretty low. Since the visuals still turned out looking good, that means the show has a high production value. The makers did everything they could to make it look pretty. I normally wouldn’t give this level of visuals an 8. But in recognition of the awesome expressions, beautiful still-shots, and high production value, I think Ice Guy deserves an extra high score.
Story: 6/10
As mentioned in the introduction, the story follows Himuro, a descendent of an ice spirit, as he works alongside his cool coworker, Miss Fuyutsuki. It’s often hard for him to fit in because whenever he gets happy, excited, or flustered, he activates a lot of snow and/or ice all around him. He’s also slightly awkward and anxious by nature, so communication is rarely smooth. But slowly, Himuro makes friends at work and develops a strong crush on Fuyutsuki, who is always so kind to him.
The starting concept for Ice Guy – about people being descendants of mythical creatures – is fairly good. However, the rest of the story category is sadly lacking. Since there is no central conflict and no major drama, the anime is often boring and/or redundant. We really didn’t need twelve episodes of empty fluff. There also wasn’t much good humor, or at least not in a style that amuses me. Then there is the problem with the basic plot.
The main plotline is the progression of the romance between Himuro and Fuyutsuki. But even after twelve episodes, these two still aren’t dating and haven’t shared a kiss. Perhaps they aren’t dating because they are coworkers; workplace romances are generally frowned upon or outright forbidden by companies. That seems like a cop-out though, especially when both of them are aware, by the end of the series, that the romantic feelings are mutual.
I am easily disappointed by anime romances that fail to progress. That’s just one more reason this anime’s story didn’t impress me. While I’m complaining, let me also air out my grievances about the final episode of the series. The title and the events of the episode were leading up to a situation where Himuro and Fuyutsuki had to spend the night under the same roof. While I didn’t expect them to actually have sex, I thought it would still lead to some kind of climactic romantic moment.
Instead, Himuro got stuck in his child body and had a very weird, very uncomfortable few seconds of leaning over Fuyutsuki and staring down at her. (When Himuro is too warm or has a fever, he “melts,” making him take on a small form that looks like a child version of himself.) It was uncomfortable because there was sexual tension between a grown woman and a child. On top of that, it’s just a let-down. There could have been a serious, emotionally moving development, but the potential was wasted.
I’m giving the story category only 6/10. It’s not like Ice Guy is has a terrible plot, but it’s what I consider average or mediocre due to the issues explained before.
Audio: 7/10
Note: I only discuss the original Japanese audio in my anime reviews.
The voice-acting in Ice Guy is highly entertaining, showcasing some talented voices. Most notably, Fuyutsuki is voiced by Yui Ishikawa, who was also the seiyuu behind Mikasa (Attack on Titan) and Violet (Violet Evergarden). I am a big fan of this talented lady. She seems to be somewhat typecast, since all of her biggest roles are young women without a great range of emotional expression. She plays cool-headed,pratical, and soft-spoken girls. I’m sure she’ll also take on more diverse roles as time goes on.
As for some of the other cast members, Chiaki Kobayashi is the voice of Himuro. This relatively young voice-actor started appearing in anime in 2019, so he’s “fresh talent.” Already, Kobayashi is proving his skill with several main roles (though the only one I know is Gabimaru from Hell’s Paradise.) Another good seiyuu in Ice Guy is Ayane Sakura, who plays Miss Otonashi. I love her voice, which is typically deeper than usual for female Japanese VAs. Ayane Sakura is most known for playing Uraraka in My Hero Academia.
Next, let’s talk about music and songs. Ruka Kawada composed the instrumental music, which was fine but easily forgettable. The opening song is “Frozen Midnight” by Takao Sakuma. It’s a very chill, lofi electronica song with a more intense chorus. This isn’t a style I typically enjoy, but I didn’t dislike this song, either. The ending theme is “Linaria” by Nowlu. I enjoyed this song, but find it difficult to describe the style. Perhaps RnB? The horn component is strong and the female vocals are lovely.
Although the audio components in Ice Guy are certainly “good” (7/10), I don’t consider them “excellent” (8/10) as a whole. That’s mostly because the instrumental music isn’t very memorable, and the opening and ending songs are not styles that I generally like. That being said, the voice-acting was great. I could gush about that for a few more paragraphs, but we’ll put a cap on it here.
Characters: 7/10
The general character development isn’t great. Himuro, Fuyutsuki, and others in the office do change and experience personal growth, but in a way that could have been done in 1-3 episodes. Again, 12 episodes were definitely not needed. Besides that, there are other issues, too. The characters do not have any major conflicts or intense drama. While those aspects are often over-done in drama shows, it’s equally bad to downplay them too much. The character arcs were simple, short, and sometimes even boring.
Despite the poor character development overall, Ice Guy has other positives going for it, such as great character concepts. The starting ideas for the characters are creative and unusual. Himuro is a quiet but expressive young man descended from a Yuki Ona. Saejima and Fuyutsuki are both normal humans, but they are quite different in terms of personality. Komori is a mischevous lady descended from a Kitsune (Japanese fox spirit). As the series goes on, we also meet a few other characters, like Katori, a hyperactive young man who is descended from a phoenix.
This may be venturing into the personal enjoyment category, but I thoroughly enjoyed these characters. Besides the two main characters, my favorite is Komori. She’s very cute, goofy, and attractive. I love her adorable ears and fluffy tail. I also enjoyed watching the antics and high spirits of Kotori. And of course, Himuro and Fuyutsuki are both extremely endearing. I’m sure there are people who disagree, but I think all these characters are likeable and fun to watch.
This category deserves a 7/10 because, at the end of the day, the characters are creative, cute, and entertaining. Their personalities are quite believable despite being quirky. Not every anime needs to have super deep or dramatic character development.
Personal Enjoyment: 6/10
I would have enjoyed this anime more if it had showed concrete romantic progress for the main couple. Additionally, I sometimes felt irritated by the wasted opportunities for better character development and stronger story themes. There were also a number of small frustrations, such as the low-key queer-baiting of making Himuro’s sister seem interested in Fuyutsuki (only to never follow up on that). But the #1 reason for my low enjoyment is boredom. Even if there are no problematic elements, a sufficiently low-action, low-drama anime isn’t going to score too well with me.
Now that we’ve gone over the negatives, let’s look at why I enjoyed Ice Guy as much as I did. (6/10 is still a solid score for this category.) There were aspects of each of the four categories that I loved: Visual (shots with beautiful lighting), Story (fun little plot points like the business trips), Audio (the voice-acting of Yui Ishikawa), and characters. The best thing about the characters is that Fuyutsuki and Himuro are both unusual in ways that I appreciate. Let me explain.
Fuyutsuki can be quite weird. At one point, knowing that Himuro loves cats, she gifted him the shed whiskers of her cat Nyamero. They are supposed to be lucky items, so it’s a sweet gesture. But who the hell collects their cat’s whiskers? And then gives them to a coworker? Fuyutsuki is also unusual in that she’s confident but quiet. Despite being helpful, practical, and competent, she isn’t bossy or prideful. Also, almost nothing seriously gets to her. She’s just too cool.
This is a bit of a tangent, but it will tie back in eventually. In anime, the terms “cute” and “cool” are usually gendered to an annoying degree. You hear characters parroting the sexist rhetoric that says girls don’t want to be called strong or cool. Likewise, men don’t appreciate being called cute or endearing. In my experience with reasonable people of various genders, nobody really cares about that. They aren’t as insecure or bound to strict, tired gender roles, so they don’t scramble to grab the “manly” or “womanly” words.
With Japanese culture still deeply affected by sexism, it’s a breath of fresh air when the pointless gendering is either not present or reversed from what you expect. Fuyutsuki would normally be the “Kawaii/cute” coworker. Instead, she’s the “cool” colleague who is sometimes called “Kakkoii” meaning cool or gallant. It was very refreshing to see, so I enjoyed this aspect a lot.
Similarly, Himuro is unusual because he’s endearing, gentle, and emotionally expressive. He gets flustered easily, and it’s adorable. Put simply, Himuro is cute. I don’t think that makes him feminine per se, but there are many people (with strict ideas of gender) who would insult his masculinity simply because he’s not an asshole. Himuro is great for disproving those who think men need always be the cool ones.
At the end of the day, this doesn’t need to be a gendered issue, nor is it even a true dichotomy. You can be cute sometimes and cool other times. What counts as cute or cool also depends on who is making the subjective assessment. I think Fuyutsuki is incredibly cute at times, too. Both of them are. Though it scored “only” a 6/10 in terms of personal enjoyment overall, this anime had some genuinely good points.
Overall Score: 6.8 / 10.0
The overall score is the average of the five categories discussed above. It’s my attempt to balance out the numbers, since they can vary quite a lot. A score in the 6s is far from ideal, but can still be worth watching depending on what you’re looking for. I don’t regret watching Ice Guy in the slightest.
This anime has been well-received so far, at least on MyAnimeList.net (I haven’t checked any other rating sites). Its current score on MAL is 7.32, which is significantly higher than the number at which I arrived. I think that’s perfectly fine. If someone enjoyed Ice Guy more than me, more power to them. It’s a creative, cute anime, if lacking in the kind of excitement that I prefer.
Thanks for reading~
PATREON
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