My collection of short anime reviews

The one-winged fallen angel a.k.a. the main male protagonist and one of the best characters in this anime.

The second review for this month is yet another of last year’s series titled Seitokai Yakuindomo. Unlike the previous anime reviewed here that also comes out last year, this anime sure has much saner (and blander) given title. Both of them has the same distinction of not being able to dethrone the current ‘Anime of the Year 2010’ holder Katanagatari though. This anime is surprisingly decent for reasons that can be counterintuitive for a title in the genre. Read on to see what those reasons are.

The main male protagonist’s classmate-cum-student council member, also one of the best characters in this anime.

Story:-
The nonchalant main MALE protagonist is just starting his first day at his new high-school that has just turned co-ed from being an all-GIRLS school, and he was suddenly drafted into the all-girls only student council, as a vice-president to boot. Handling the administrative chores is actually the easy part for the inexperienced him, because dealing with his new comrades in the student council is proving to be a substantially more awkward experience.

This anime really shows its 4-koma origins in its method of storytelling presentation, and that is definitely this title’s first weakness I have noticed. Using the 4-koma presentation techniques on the small screen is definitely not a good idea mainly because it caused the pacing to be terrifyingly fast (not as fast as a typical Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei season though) and the transitions between scenes is pretty much incoherent. Let just say that this anime’s plot progression is the worst when compared to the last 50 titles reviewed here before, and that’s saying something considering that we have ‘gems‘ like Infinite Stratos and Dragon Crisis within those 50 titles.

What this anime should have done is to learn how other 4-koma-based titles like the two excellent 2010 titles like Working!! and K-On!! were adapted to their anime forms while leaving their 4-koma roots behind. This anime can actually do this in episode 3, 7, 9 and 11 where panels that has the same themes are bunched together. If only this anime could have been more consistent with this for the whole series, this anime would have done better in the presentation aspects.

This ‘airhead’ scene is funny the first time it appears, but not sure if it works after three times or so.

It takes me about three episodes or so to get used with all those crass toilet humor dialogues, and you know what, they are mostly average. A damning verdict for a so-called comedy title. Dependence of the sexually-themed jokes (could do more with slapstick humor for example, or more ‘vertically-challenged’ jokes) and usage of quickly expiring elements multiple times (see above) is a negative, and there are times when I feel like some of the jokes was simply shoe-horned into the episode for the sake of they being there. There are some good exceptions, and also bad ones, that deviates from the average though. Just see the image below.

The recurring ‘Suzu’s Head’ joke never gets old though.

This anime is still watchable though for a couple of reasons. The first one is the character strengths of the main male protagonist and also his blonde classmate shorty who also happened to be in the student council. Watching him suffering sexual harassments by his seniors in the student council (and his sister and his teacher and more) while still standing his ground (his counterpart in OreImo could learn a lot from him when it comes to not being a doormat) is one of the attractions of this anime. He could do well to be more proactive when it comes to generating jokes though, instead of always having to react to them. And this is where Suzu the Shorty has done very well indeed, while still being able to hold off her seniors just as well as the main male protagonist is. These two characters really helps shoring up character developments in this series, offsetting the one-dimensional airhead rich girl and also the main female protagonist that can be creepier than Kirino herself. Thinking about that, when it comes to this, even the androphobia girl and the newspaper reporter are better than them.

I have mixed emotions about her character perverseness here, but one thing for sure is that she is still better than half of the members of the student council. You know who am I referring to right?

The other reason why you should still watch this anime is the solid slice-of-life high school life plots it has. Despite being held back by the piss-poor presentation and the generally average accompanying humor, you will be able to see the main male protagonist doing his thing as he sailed through the first year of his high school life dealing with his seniors, Suzu, the judo girl and his little sister (she is proof that this series is nearly one-dimensional in nature). The ending is non-existent and allows for a continuation. The OVA actually do just that, but I actually hoped that a proper second season will come out for this series. This series should have at least one year-worth (in the series timeline) of story material left, which will be left to waste if this anime was extended only with OVAs.

Quoted For Truth.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime is good, and has plenty of black hairs to go around. This is one example where character designs between the manga and anime has very little difference, if any at all. A positive aspect for this anime.

For someone who claims that she can speak native English, this scene totally demolished that claim.

Voice Acting:-
Being another title with huge amount of dialogues (despite the fast pacing), voice acting in this anime is great, even better than what you can hear in OreImo. The two main protagonists, Suzu (except for the scene above), their supervising teacher and the newspaper reporter are outstanding characters in the regard. The rest of the characters’ roster has done well too and I don’t see any bad gigs here. A positive aspect for this anime.

One of the genuinely good sexually-connoted humor scene in this anime…

Music:-
The OST in this anime is excellent, probably the best I have heard for a while. Too bad that the OP/ED themes is nowhere as good as it though.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is good, even in the very few fast-paced scenes it has. Just like OreImo, choreography didn’t apply here. The director really screw-up by using the manga storytelling techniques instead of adapting a more measured approach (that may kill the manga timeline I suppose) seen in other similar adaptations.

…while this one isn’t one of them.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Not as good as the referenced Hakuouki Hekketsu-roku that is mentioned at the end of the anime. Hey did I forgot to mention that this anime also make references? And did I also say that its beach episode is nowhere as exciting as Highschool of the Dead OVA is?

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-ux