Scum's Wish

Seventeen-year-old Mugi Awaya and Hanabi Yasuraoka appear to be the ideal couple. They are both pretty popular, and they seem to suit each other well. However, outsiders don't know of the secret they share. Both Mugi and Hanabi have hopeless crushes on someone else, and they are only dating each other to soothe their loneliness. Mugi is in love with Akane Minagawa, a young teacher who used to be his home tutor. Hanabi is also in love with a teacher, a young man who has been a family friend since she was little. In each other, they find a place where they can grieve for the ones they cannot have, and they share physical intimacy driven by loneliness. Will things stay like this for them forever?

Scum's Wish (2017) is a Japanese animated romance drama series created for Fuji TV, adapted from a manga and produced by the studio Lerche. Seventeen-year-old Mugi Awaya and Hanabi Yasuraoka look like the perfect high school couple, but their relationship is a private arrangement built on loneliness. Each is hopelessly in love with someone out of reach: Mugi with Akane Minagawa (voiced by Aki Toyosaki), a young teacher who once tutored him at home, and Hanabi with a family friend who is also a teacher. Voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki as Mugi and Chika Anzai as Hanabi, the story unfolds across a single twelve-episode run of roughly twenty-three minutes each, following their secret physical closeness and the grief they carry. The engine is the tension between the performance they keep up for classmates and the emptiness they share in private. Set in a contemporary Japanese high school, the series is psychological and intimate, with a melancholic, uncomfortable register that foregrounds yearning over comfort. Fans of Your Lie in April and Oregairu will find resonance in its portrait of adolescent heartache and the cost of unreturned feelings.

Audiences rate the series as mixed, valuing its frank portrayal of loneliness and unrequited love while finding its bleak tone and uneven payoff divisive.

• Your Lie in Aprilshared tones of unrequited longing and teen emotional melancholy, school romance with psychological undercurrents
• Oregairushared forbidden attachment to a teacher and adolescent romantic dysfunction in a Japanese high school setting
• Komi Can't Communicateshared bleak romantic drama about characters using relationships to cope with loneliness and unrequited feelings

Release Date

2017-01-13

Episode runtime

23 min

Rating

6.7 / 10 (128)

What is Scum's Wish about?

Two popular high schoolers pretend to be a couple while secretly pining for others, using each other to ease their loneliness.

What is Scum's Wish like to watch?

Ember's analysis rates the pacing of Scum's Wish as measured, its intensity as strong and its storytelling as easy to follow.

Is Scum's Wish violent?

No — Ember's analysis finds no violence in Scum's Wish.

What did critics think of Scum's Wish?

Audiences rate the series as mixed, valuing its frank portrayal of loneliness and unrequited love while finding its bleak tone and uneven payoff divisive.

Which shows are like Scum's Wish?

Shows with a similar feel include Your Lie in April, Oregairu, and Komi Can't Communicate.

How long is Scum's Wish?

Scum's Wish: 1 season, 12 episodes.

Is Scum's Wish still running?

No, Scum's Wish has ended.