YMMV / Sarazanmai

• Awesome Music: The OP, KANA-BOON's "Massara", is a peppy catchy beat to listen to.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Kazuki is stunningly unpopular in America compared to Japan; while Japanese fans generally see him as a pitiable character who is trying his best despite all his flaws, Americans view him as a brat who constantly whines over his own minor issues while not caring about his peers who are going through the same emotional distress. At least part of this is due to Values Dissonance, since Kazuki's issues over finding out that he was actually adopted is rooted in Japan's overall social and legal stigma against adoption, which isn't as much of an issue in North America.
• Base-Breaking Character: During the Anime’s airing, Enta became this for the American audience due to his Stalker with a Crush tendencies toward Kazuki as well as his deliberately sabotaging Kazuki and Tooi to keep them from hanging out due to his jealousy. While some sympathized with him due to finding him relatable, others found him to be rather annoying and even rooted against him and Kazuki potentially being paired together by the end which sparked further interest in the Kazuki/Tooi pairing. While he wasn’t quite as controversial as Ringo from Penguindrum who filled a similar role, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to see his defenders and detractors debating his actions.
• Common Knowledge: The fanbase reveres MAPPA for yet again creating an LGBT work of high quality, though it is unknown to most of the fanbase that the credit should be going to the lesser known Lapin Track due to how little involvement MAPPA actually had in the show itself.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The way Keppi turns the boys into kappa; he swallows them whole, forcefully extracts their shirikodama from their butts, and is explicitly shown in the first episode to poop them out afterward. While this can go into Squick or Nausea Fuel for some, the utterly bizarre way it's presented makes it wrap right around to being hilarious.
• Epileptic Trees: Some fans in both sides of the pond found quite a few similarities with Mabu and Enta (the haircuts and glasses, the romantic love not getting through to their respective interests, Taking the Bullet, etc). Some theorized that Enta was an alternate Mabu, that Mabu gets reincarnated into Enta, or even that Enta is just a younger Mabu before things went to hell.
• Fanon: It's very common belief that Tooi will start wearing red earrings just like Chikai's after the events of the series - even some of the staff artists have gotten in on it.
• Friendly Fandoms: Is developing this with both Yuri!!! on Ice and Banana Fish fans due to them being worked on by MAPPA and featuring LGBT characters.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Reo ripping out Mabu's heart in the "Kawausoiya" sequences takes a sadder turn in episode 7, where the otters tell Reo that he can do exactly that and kill the revived Mabu for good if he's unsure about the results.
• I Knew It!:
  • Quite a few fans had guessed that Kazuki would have a crossdressing subplot from as early as the Connections trailers, where they had seen his pink keychained phone and slightly pink fingernails and guessed he had been doing it from that.
  • Before the Anime aired, the fandom had guessed due to Mabu’s inhumanly pale appearance compared to the main cast, that he had died before the events of the shows main plot and is a zombie. In episode 6 and 7, it is revealed that this is the case and that he was fitted with a mechanical heart to keep him alive.
  • A Zombie battle involving Mabu as the subject of desire was guessed nearly from the beginning. Many also guessed that Mabu is a Kappa, but they didn't pick up on Reo being a Kappa as well.
• Inferred Holocaust: Reo's grief induced rage in episode 10 blew up a city street as well as an adjacent large bridge, neither of which are brought up or referenced in the epilogue. There's not even an excuse of being in the kappa world to remedy this; when this confrontation takes place they're still in their human forms.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The anime is only 11 episodes long, and as a result many viewers feel that it tried to cram in as many ideas as it could while dropping a lot of plot points that could have been explored further.
• LGBT Fanbase: Due to being a Kunihiko Ikuhara work, it naturally acquired this though it even began to draw in even non-fans of Ikuhara due to the heartwarming prequel manga about Reo and Mabu.
• Narm: The English dub of "Kawausoiya". "Otterly Sexy", anyone?
• One True Pairing: Reo and Mabu. Fans are reluctant to pair them up with anyone else, as they're the only two characters in a consistently close partnership throughout their arcs in the prequel manga, Character Blog, and anime. Episode 10 confirms their mutual romantic love for each other, vindicating the fans.
• One True Threesome: With all three potential pairs between Kazuki, Enta, and Tooi each getting their own bonding moments and Ship Tease, a lot of fans have decided that there's no need to choose and embrace the Golden Trio instead.
• Portmanteau Couplename: Reomabu. Even staff and official merchandise sometimes use it.
• Quirky Work: Being an anime by Kunihiko Ikuhara, this was inevitable. The first episode alone features some of the most bizarre imagery any of his series have had, most notably the rather strange and graphic sequence where Keppi swallows Kazuki whole and takes his shirikodama. The anime's frequent references to Kappa and the folklore surrounding them would also be lost on most non-Japanese viewers who aren't familiar with kappa or Japanese folklore in general.
• Squick: The majority of how the boys are turned into kappa and how they fight the zombies. Could double as Nausea Fuel depending on your sensibilities. Notable examples from episode 1 include Keppi turning the boys into Kappa by eating them and shitting them out, and the boys launching into the zombies' asshole to pull out their shirikodama, which Keppi later eats. It’s all drawn in great detail, as well.
  • For some, the very premise of the show is this mostly due to it focusing on underage boys, all three of whom have gotten nude scenes. It’s debatable whether said scenes, however, are meant to be seen in a fanservice-y light.
  • Enta’s crush on Kazuki for some due to how it’s depicted in episode 3, making him come off as some sort of stalker. The fact that he has delusions about the latter doesn’t help his case.
  • The Soba Zombie's reason for stealing bathwater in episode 4 is that he wanted to cook soba in the bathwater of the woman he loved. Bon appétit…?
  • Keppi and Sara becoming an Official Couple. While some find it oddly endearing, others think it’s a bit weird due to the perception that Keppi is an older man (Or Kappa in this case) compared to Sara who looks about the same age as the main trio. Keppi’s age isn’t exactly revealed, so it’s unknown if he’s actually older than her or not or if Sara is actually an adult who looks younger, similar to Enta’s older sister.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Despite speculation from the Manga readers on who Sara’s manager is after his appearance in the Anime and at the end of the Manga appearing alongside Keppi’s true form, he ended up being largely irrelevant to the show overall after the episode he debuted in.
  • For that matter, Sara herself. While she was important in the manga spinoff and she had interactions with the cops, anime Sara barely talks to them or gets more involved with the plot even as a part of the Greek Chorus.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Enta's crush on Kazuki, while it had some development, didn't go how many had hoped it would. In general some fans believed that the crush was brushed aside in favor of other plot elements, with Enta getting major focus in only a few episodes. Even when Enta gets shot and put in the hospital, the drama was less about him and more about Kazuki.
  • The cops in general were felt like they were mishandled in the anime continuity. Their backstory was only tangentially referenced in the show, which makes the bond that drives their plot seem a little less strong than what it appeared to be.
  • The main boys' bonds are treated like this as well. Although they have a decent amount of interactions with each other, much of their in series relationship was of them confronting their problems or each other. Interactions such as the clean up in episode 7 or the SNS promotional logs were rare, making some fans think that their emphasis on The Power of Friendship in the finale came off as hollow.
  • The distinction between Love energy and Desire energy has only had one real part exploring it in the series, when Haruka's feelings towards his brother are considered the former. The concept isn't explored again after episode 6.
• Ugly Cute: Keppi and Sara’s true forms to some viewers who don’t find them straight up ugly.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Reo and Mabu. Their love story is tragic, but for most of the anime they were kidnapping random people and turning them into monsters that literally erase the person's entire existence when they are defeated. And it doesn't help that they shot Enta, which nearly killed him, yet no one in the anime really blames them.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Tooi is shown to grow and sell marijuana (though he just refers to it as "herb" in the subs, possibly the Japanese equivalent of "weed") and also carries a gun around. Though he's obviously too young to be doing any of those things, most North American fans are likely to just make jokes about it (especially since cannabis is now legal in Canada). However, Japan has much stricter laws on drugs and gun ownership, so the fact that Tooi is shown with marijuana at all is much more serious from a Japanese perspective.
  • Kazuki's issues over feeling disconnected from his family after finding out he's adopted may come off as Wangst to western fans since his adoptive family clearly loves and cares for him and his birth mother seems content that he has a good family to look after him, but it's more understandable when you take into account how being adopted, happily or otherwise is much more stigmatizing in Japan for various social and legal reasons.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Kazuki’s little brother was thought to be a girl until the work said otherwise. It doesn't help that the English anime subtitles in episode one mistranslate Kazuki's emails as going to a girl, likely due to his appearance and having a unisex name.
• Wangst: Enta's big secret of having an unhealthy unrequited crush on Kazuki. Ironically, Kazuki's problems with being adopted and his guilt over Haruka's paralysis are put into a better light here, as they're put in conjunction with a boy who by comparison starts causing group drama over romantic jealousy (ie thinking Tooi connecting with Kazuki will steal him away) and nearly gets the subject of his crush killed due to his actions.
• Win Back the Crowd: Before the Anime aired, there was skepticism on whether or not the Boys' Love elements teased in the prequel manga would be retained in the anime adaption, especially between Reo and Mabu who have all but been confirmed to have romantic feelings for each other in the manga. Episode 2 of the Anime confirms it will at least have some boys love elements in it, and episode 10 couldn't make the romance between Reo and Mabu more explicit if it tried.