Aharen-San is Indecipherable is a charming rom-com anime series that isn’t afraid to use some truly goofy visual gags to deliver a punchline in its episodes. These visual gags range from picturing Aharen Reina as a glam metal star to her using a periscope in class, but there’s an even more wholesome visual gag at work — the Aharen family dog, Nui.
In a few scenes here and there, the large canine Nui made an appearance, often to deliver missing or forgotten items, including Aharen’s lunch or even the deredere Aharen Ren’s wallet during a grocery shopping trip. Nui the dog returns in Episode 10, proving what a good boy he really is. Dogs are a girl’s best friend, even in anime.
In Episode 10 of Aharen-San, the central group of friends goes camping, and as someone who absolutely loves food, Aharen volunteers to bring along all the ingredients for campground cooking. To her dismay, she digs through her huge backpack at the campsite, only to realize she had forgotten all the food. Fortunately, her good friend Raido shows his gracious can-do attitude and encourages the friends to go foraging for dinner, which works out just fine. Then, that night, the Aharen family dog Nui, makes his third appearance in the Aharen-San anime. Nui pounces on Aharen with a box of the mixing food in his mouth, and Aharen is delighted. Nui always knows what his owners need.
This is Nui’s third time acting as the anime’s Lassie and coming to the rescue when no one expects it. The first time was when Nui arrived at Aharen’s high school with a missing lunch, and the second was when Aharen’s brother Ren lost his wallet during a grocery trip with Raido, only for both Nui and Aharen Reina to arrive with the missing wallet in Nui’s mouth. Now Nui is three for three with missing items, showing that this smart hound truly has his owners’ best interests at heart. He’s almost like a very minor, benign deus ex machina that can save the day at the last second when no one expects an animal to be on top of things like that. And Nui isn’t the only pet dog in manga and anime to fulfill this role.
Aharen and her dog Nui fulfill the “petite girl and her big dog friend” trend in anime — an obscure but surprisingly common trope seen in anime and manga across the decades. A recent example is the Spy x Family manga by Tatsuya Endo, where the huge white dog named Bond soon enters the picture as the little Anya Forger’s best canine friend. Like Anya, Bond has supernatural powers — in this case, Bond can see the immediate future, and Anya can read Bond’s mind to prevent disaster before it happens.
Another example is the child genius Mihama Chiyo in Azumanga Daioh!. Chiyo is much younger than her classmates but is actually more responsible than most of them, including preparing breakfast for her entire family and walking her massive dog, Mr. Tadakichi. In one scene, the kuudere character Sakaki watched in wonder as Chiyo actually hopped onto Mr. Tadakichi’s back and rode him home, and it’s easy to imagine Aharen doing that with Nui, too. A grimmer third example is Nina Tucker and her huge dog Alexander in Fullmetal Alchemist, who got along wonderfully until Nina’s desperate father Shou melded them into a chimera to keep his state alchemist license. Thankfully, it’s certain that nothing like that will ever happen in a high school rom-com like Aharen-San is Indecipherable.