From Sentai Filmworks, When Will Ayumu Make His Move charges forth on blu-ray, ready to participate in club activities. Is the promoted pawn your favorite piece too? Come on in!
Ayumu is a stone-faced and athletically-inclined freshman in high school who previously excelled in the Kendo Club in middle school. Everyone is shocked when, rather than joining the high school kendo club, he signs up for the Shogi Club (which isn’t even really official since it only has two members including him). Why would Ayumu do such a thing, particularly since he knows very little about shogi (basically like a more complex chess specific to Japan) and is pretty bad at it? Well, the founder/president and only other member of the Shogi Club is a cute, petite 2nd year girl named Urushi and Ayumu wants desperately to confess his love to her. But he has promised himself that he won’t confess until he is able to defeat her at shogi. The problem is that she is REALLY good at it. Will Ayumu ever claim victory and profess his feelings?
The idea of a romance in a club setting is definitely not an original anime idea. There are tons of them. Often they are harem anime but not always. When Will Ayumu Make His Move eschews the harem concept altogether and even diverges from the usual will they/won’t they formula. It’s pretty clear from the opening scene of the first episode that Ayumu and Urushi like each other. As such the question isn’t “will they” but “WHEN will they”. The series does add a secondary love interest in the back half but it pretty consistently feels one-sided, so it’s obvious that sub plot won’t become a significant conflict in the storyline. As such, the story stays focused almost entirely on Ayumu and Urushi and their slow progress toward becoming a couple. We see them eating lunch together, visiting a shrine, taking part in student festivities and, of course, playing shogi. Urushi seems downright obsessed, even carrying around a travel version with her everywhere she goes. Ayumu is a somewhat odd lead character. Rarely showing any kind of emotion and extraordinarily blunt and honest with his thoughts. It’s a nice break from the usual fumbling, bumbling, ‘gee golly gosh’ nice guy anime lead that so frequently shows up in rom-com anime.
Sentai delivers us another nice, well-balanced recent transfer with a solid if unremarkable DTS-HD 2.0 Japanese audio track. For extras, all we have are the usual clean OP and ED animations, and that is it.
While this series is a pretty light-hearted show will little stakes, it’s consistently pleasant to watch, and Urushi is indeed an adorable lead character. This is a nice one to put on if you’re looking for a bit of a break from the high-spirited action of the latest isekai or Shonen Jump series.