Alternative title(s): Debu to Love to Ayamachi to!
Manga Adaptation by Marvy Jack
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

Yumeko Koda is a self-loathing young woman who is consumed by anxiety about her weight. However, an ‘accident’ sees her wake up in hospital with no knowledge of who she is – and a complete change in personality. Now outgoing and confident, she resumes company work with a newfound positivity – even when dealing with a suspected attempted murder and coworkers who must come to terms with Yumeko’s new bubbly self.

Artemis’ verdict: Tonal Whiplash

I’m not sure how else to describe this anime aside from weird. Like completely tonally, atmospherically off. This is marketed as a romantic comedy first and foremost – an adult workplace piece about a young woman who had an ‘accident’ and regains consciousness as an amnesiac. Previously, her existence was by all accounts lived out as a deeply self-conscious, miserable, lonely, and outright self-hating “fat girl” (in her own words), whose accident is at first ruled a suicide attempt. However, as an amnesiac, Yumeko is confident and outgoing, invested in her own worth and far from a wallflower or pushover – much to the chagrin of many of her colleagues.

Plus-sized Misadventures in Love! is in no way attempting to be offensive or even ‘edgy’ – it presents itself as a light-hearted romp that, plot-wise, plays out more or less exactly how you’d expect from the title. My issue isn’t really the storyline or characters, or even its lack of realism; it’s that it just kinda breezes past the “this woman was suspected to have committed suicide” and nobody, not even her own parents (whom she lives with), seems to care. Their reaction is quite literally “first a suicide attempt, now amnesia? What will the neighbors think?” When it turns out this was possibly instead an attempted murder, not even Yumeko herself appears to take this especially seriously. It’s a lot, and while I can definitely respect certain topics not being played out for shock value or dark melodrama, I also can’t quite reconcile such a massive swing in the other direction given some of the subject matter here.