Personally, I love that canonically Tomoko always gets the upper hand on Nemo. At the beginning when Nemo and Tomoko first met, I thought it was gonna be the other way around, but now Tomoko always ends up playing Nemo like a fiddle. Great stuff.
I honestly don't think you could of done something like this series 10 or 15 years ago, I think it's only possible because the audience as a whole have become more carried and open to more ideas and concepts.