REVIEW: ‘A Girl And Her Guard Dog’ Episode 4 — “Duty and Danger”

A Girl And Her Guard Dog is a problematic anime that just keeps on giving. Or rather, it keeps me asking why I’m still pressing play every episode. That said, the series seems to be centering Isaku Senagaki’s (Akari Kitô) self-reflection above Keiya Uto’s (Yûichirô Umehara) attraction to his young charge, which is apparently treated like his daughter and sister (yeah) at least up until the last episode, where he confessed his feelings to her. That said, in A Girl And Her Guard Dog Episode 4, ” Duty and Danger,” the series chooses to show the audience why Isaku is against acting on her love for Keiya, which ultimately comes from the danger he is in constantly and he just can’t give her the happy married normal life she dreamed of finding—in high school?

In traditional shoujo fashion, A Girl And Her Guard Dog Episode 4 brings its totally not inappropriately aged couple on a school trip. While it has the usual tropes of jealousy while cooking and even the mischievous girls sneaking into the boy’s bath, well, when you compare how Isaku is animated to how Keiya is animated, it gets weird, really quick. I am all for appreciation of how attractive Keiya is animated, especially how well his shoulder tattoos are animated. But when you put him next to Isaku it just gets awkward and really weird.

At this point, I’m watching A Girl And Her Guard Dog, and I’m just going to have to accept the age gap at least for reviewing purposes, but the truth is that the series is very obsessed with pointing out the maturity differences between the leads. While some of the previous episodes allowed the audience to forget the situation of our leads, often snapping them back to reality in the final moments of each episode, A Girl And Her Guard Dog Episode 4 never allows the audience to forget.

That said, it mostly plays out well with Isaku understanding why she can’t actually give into Keiya’s request for a kiss. She talks to the audience and Keiya through her thought process. At the start of the episode, she saw Keiya come under attack and get injured by a man with a gun. Now, that’s all she can think of. She is very aware of not only the age gap but also how they occupy different spaces of the same criminal world. It’s a moment of self-reflection that, at the very least, shows some growth for our main character. Even if we’re slingshot back to everything when Keiya flirts with his literal teacher by starting to unzip her blouse. The hijinks that make the series funny in a manga are most definitely more out of place in animation. But that’s not all that doesn’t transfer well.

While Isaku is able to animate Keiya to be absolutely attractive, the series’ animation struggles with its background. The ill-proportioned animations have been fairly consistent but at the very least tried to stay in long with the manga for the most part. That said, in the scene where Keiya and Isaku are in the bathroom holding each other (and of course, Keiya is only in a towel) audiences see a toilet fit for a giant. In manga and webtoons, more generally, the comically large proportions of bathrooms is something that usually makes the fanbase laugh but there is something extremely off-putting about seeing it in animation that makes me question the time given to background artists to finish their art.

I don’t know why I’m still watching A Girl And Her Guard Dog, but with Episode 4, the animation seems to have deteriorated, detracting from any charming moments of the series. Maybe it’s a fascination with watching the train wreck to its conclusion, but whatever it is, at least Keiya is hot…even if he’s a creep.

A Girl And Her Guard Dog Episode 4 is streaming now, with new episodes every Thursday.