Of course, the past Spring Season had plenty of gems with a ton of depth, but what made it really stand apart from all other seasons is that I now have two new favourite moe fanservice series. It’s a genre I usually hate, but this season came and showed that you can actually do this genre right with enough imagination and characterization.
With B Gata H Kei, your mileage may still vary, of course. It features a loser with a hot girlfriend, oblivious to a childhood friend who is in love with him, a ton of boob jokes and a lead female who is an incredible tsundere. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that so many other series screwed up at, but this is the only one that I’ve seen that manages to come with more than just that.
The characterization managed to keep me more than interested despite these cliches. Yamada is a wonderful lead character in the way that this series explores her attempts to have sex. She’s a unique character in the sense that she has the most weird ideas and the most shameless actions. This series really likes to toy around with the embarrasment about its subject matter, in a way that I consider to be the best out of any fanservice show that I managed to sit through. Every major character in this series has his oer her own things to be embarrassed about, which results in a number of priceless situations.
In the middle of this series it may look like the series gets lost a bit into its own cliches, and these episodes by far the least interesting of the series. The creators did plan a number of great and incredibly dynamic final episodes for the series to close off. Of course, leaving aside the fact that it doesn’t actually end, and that the final episode is ONE BIG TEASE.
If you’re interested in this series, you can simply give it a one-episode taste test, it’s pretty much what you can expect of the rest of the series, so if you don’t like it, it’s not going to get better, while if you do, it’ll keep you entertained. Teenaged romances in anime are usually terrible, especially the ones that focus too much on moe, but this is actually quite a charming series about teenagers exploring their feelings about sex. There’s a ton of fanservice, but it’s not just fanservice for the sake of fanservice: it’s all there with a purpose, it’s a means to get the characters to show their best side, rather than just pointlessly showing some boobs to get viewer ratings up.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – Well paced, doesn’t drag on its jokes, and knows how to deliver them well. There are too many cockblocks for a series like this, though. |
| Characters: | 9/10 – Wonderful characterization, excellent voice acting. We get really into the minds of the lead characters, and especially the lead characters are very dynamic and pretty well developed for just 12 episodes. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Consistent, well balanced and nowhere annoying. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – A TON of cliches are present, but the series knows this and tries to make them ridiculous as much as the story allows. |
Suggestions:
– Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho
– Yoiko
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
Good to hear that, i guess i’ll give it a try .. it kinda reminds me of Futari Ecchi (which is more explicit) .. a “mature” (mature as it explores sexual themes in a smart way) romance with a mix of fan-service and comedy.
Also .. what did you mean it isn’t over by the last episode .. is there a 2nd season planned or a manga still on-going .. hmmm or is it meant to be open-ended ?
I’m glad someone else liked this series. Most of my readers hated it or just found it forgettable (God, even my wife flamed me for suggesting it!) but the uniquely brazen take on teen sex, or the lack of teens ability to really pull it off kept me chuckling and coming back for more.
cheers and I hope it gets a follow up season some day
*liked the comment about cock-blocking* xD haha! Well said. I do think it would’ve been nice if they’d progressed just a little sooner to lead up to the last episode. And gotta say there was a place somewhere where it got slow. But those few hilarious moments per episode really made it for me. It was a guilty pleasure to watch~
Hunter-wolf: well, about half of the plotlines don’t really get resolved, nd it just ends with that ambiguous “yeah, there are more things but those are in the manga”-kind of ending.
Wow…I guess i’ll give it a try. XD
@psgels
Thanks, i guess i’ll still give it a try ^_^
Another good show comes to an end đ They really made the original material come alive and made it so much more interesting.Not saying that the manga was bad,but it is a 4koma thing and the anime really improved much on it and made the characters really came alive.On Kanejou and her brother,I didn’t really find their appearance to add anything to the show at first,but their appearances in last few episodes were really funny to watch đ