One Room Tenshi Begins! Should You Watch This Cute Rom-Com?

The new anime season has started, and we already have our first anime offering up sexy fan service. It’s the story of a lucky guy who ends up living with an angel in a tiny one-room apartment. Let’s see if One Room Tenshi is worth your valuable time!

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The Story of One Room Tenshi

Shintarou Tokumitsu is a high school boy living alone in a one-room apartment. One morning, he discovers a mysterious girl sleeping on his balcony. The girl’s name is Towa, and she was sent down from heaven to learn more about the human world. He’s positive the girl is some confused cosplaying runaway, but to his surprise, she shows him her beautiful wings that allow her to fly. Just what the hell is going on here?

And so, Shintarou begins his life with an actual angel, who is eager to learn more about the human world. But where will the story tension come from? A boy living with a super kawaii angel who’ll do anything he asks isn’t exactly high drama, after all.

Happily — as the official poster from the anime shows us — Towa is only the first of five girls who will come to complicate Shintarou’s life. In addition to an amorous childhood friend, he’s going to acquire a yuki-onna (snow woman), a vampire maid and a kappa, a mythical creature similar to folk yousei spirits. I wonder how the story will unfold?

The official title is One Room, Hiatari Futsuu, Tenshi-tsuki, or Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included. It’s based on a manga by artist matoba, published by Square Enix. Seven volumes of the manga have been published, and the manga is still ongoing. As usual, I prefer anime based on manga over light novels, as the latter can often suffer from structure and pacing issues.

Lots of Sexy Fan Service!

When I wrote my review of the monster anime season that’s just started, one thing that struck me was how much sexy fan service we got in the winter 2024 season, and how sparse the new anime season seemed to be for fans of sexy visuals. I didn’t need to worry, as One Room Tenshi gives us plenty of naughty camera angles, at least so far.

The animation is being done by the relatively young anime studio Okurto Noboru, who brought us hits like Sokushi Cheat and Hyperdimension Neptunia: the Animation, as well as the super sexy How Not To Summon a Demon Lord season 2 and A Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter. Maybe this means One Room Tenshi will rule the anime season when it comes to ecchi situational comedy? We can hope!

Who Should Watch One Room Tenshi?

No one will accuse this anime of having the most original plot in the world. It’s a pretty standard self-insert male fantasy harem anime plot…but damn it, we love those! You could think of this anime as:

Chobits, but with a live-in angel instead of a robot girl.
Asobi ni Iku Yo, but with supernatural waifus instead of catgirls.
Rosario + Vampire, but with a more chill and relaxing story.

You get the idea.

Don’t Call It “One Room Angel”

You never know how a new anime’s name will get accepted by fans. Sometimes they’ll latch on to the Japanese title (Mushoku Tensei over Jobless Reincarnation). Fans might prefer saying Danmachi or Oreimo because they’re short and easy to Google…and telling your friends about anime called Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon? or My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute might cause embarrassment. Other times the English title fits a show so well that fans just embrace it, like Spice and Wolf or Attack on Titan.

But definitely don’t confuse One Room Tenshi with “One Room Angel.” The latter is a popular boy’s love manga that also got a live-action drama adaptation. This reminds me of the time Yuri On Ice! confused fans searching for yuri (lesbian) manga or anime, by showing them a BL story instead. (Phonetically speaking, Yuri on Ice! should have been written Yuuri on Ice!, because of the long vowel in the name.)

Towa I Get The Feeling This Will Be The Start Of Something Wonderful

Thanks for reading this blog post about the new One Room Tenshi rom-com anime, which I believe is the start of something wonderful for anime fans. Will you be watching the show? Tell us in the comments below!