Category: Finished Series: Comedy

The best episode of Hanamaru Youchien yet! I’m not sure whether this is because I just watched Working!! today, but it did make me think: Hanamaru Youchien is currently doing a lot of things right at which Working completely fell flat. It’s a show about a job in which we actually see adults working. The characters all have their quirks, and yet they’re also just actual people: their quirks aren’t the only thing about them. It’s got this innocence for both the adults and the children, as compared to the cast of Working, which really was trying way too hard in its first episode.

This episode was surprisingly witty, and all about different perspectives. Yamamoto always was a bit of a bimbo, but this episode shows that her sister is the same, and she actually knows this about her sister as well. It made the one-sided love of Tsuchida a lot more interesting. It was also very funny to see the three kids in this. The sharpness of their comments was just priceless.

But the best part of this episode was the second half. What an awesome way to flesh out each and every single character, simply by letting her tell why they chose to work at a kindergarten. The chemistry between these teachers is fun, but subtle and doesn’t try to shove the quirks of these characters down your throat.

Oh, and as for the role playing; Hiiragi’s deconstruction of the space adventure genre was brilliant. ^^;
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, thankfully the sister is gone now, and we’re back to what matters: the kindergarten itself. This episode completely lacked originality and it used stories that have become staples of regular romance series, but the characters were nice enough to watch. Especially Anzu has gotten a lot less annoying than what she once was.

However, I’m noticing a disturbing trend. A considerable amount of this episode was also focused on drama. Why? This show is just not good at it.

I can understand the need for conflict, but during the drama part this show abandons all that is enjoyable about it. Up till the arrival of the sister, the drama was always quick and light-hearted, but in this episode the drama hang over the cast like some angry raincloud. If the story around it was good or creative, then okay, I might understand it. But the drama was completely shallow: in the first half we have a random kid we’ve never seen before as she wants to work in her parents’ shop. In the second half we have a rich girl who gets added to Tsuchida’s harem but decides not to marry him but love him from afar because she’s no match for the main love rival.

What I’m missing in this series is creativity. The first five episodes did this so well… but after the sister’s appearance it’s just been one predictable and overused story after the other. I have no idea why. The creators aren’t idiots: they just could have picked out the best chapters of the manga and have fun with it, and instead they chose the most predictable ones for the past three episodes.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Um… why is this series trying to become a drama?

This was an all-around ‘meh’ episode. It completely dropped the roleplay and stuffed in a ton of cliches that anime creators normally use when they’re out of ideas. The ideas of bringing Tsuchida to his hometown was nice, but we already saw Yamamoto in her bikini last episode. We already saw Tsuchida’s tsundere sister in the last episode.

The summer festival. It’s a staple of generic harems. A ton of girls who comment on how the lead character is nice. Again, a ton of harem series done that before. Fireworks? Been there, done that. And seriously, what was up with that shallow drama between Tsuchida and his sister. I’ve asked this many times before: why is anime so obsessed over brother complexes? It’s less common to have a younger sister who isn’t in love with you!

The adults in this series stood out to me because they were so down to earth. Well… not any more.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

A bit of a lesser episode because it had some unnecessary stereotypes: the pool episode and the tsundere sister, things that have been done millions of times before. But yeah, I guess that in the context of this series it still had its fresh elements.

That swimsuit was a bit too much, especially considering how Yamamoto had no idea about Tsuchida’s reaction to it. It’s a good thing that she still lives with her parents, because I really don’t think that she could take care of herself on her own… But overall, what set this episode apart was the focus on siblings. And when Tsuchida’s sister wasn’t acting like a shallow tsundere, she was surprisingly down to earth and interesting. And the synchronized swimming part was hilarious.

The thing about this series is that the adults all had lives on high school before they started to work at the kindergarten, which were vastly different compared to what you’d see in high school series, in which kids tend to segue from one to the other quite naturally. Tsuchidahas been characterized pretty well throughout the past six episode, however he remains rather annoying when he keeps ogling at Yamamoto.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

A Neon Genesis Evangelion reference. I see what you did there, Gainax.

Seriously though, I’m a big fan of parodies, but only a specific kind of them. I love the kind of parodies that deconstruct a genre or stereotype, making them look completely ridiculous with their own logic. Random reference dropping however… meh. That really gets old after a while. Hanamaru Youchien was hopping back and forth between these types in this episode.

The role play in this episode is great and wonderfully subtle. However that full metal alchemist reference just dropped all of the subtlety. Although, I do have to admit: with Evangelion 15 years old at this point, Tsuchida could easily have been amongst the kids who grew up with this revolutionary new anime. You can see that he’s not watching anime anymore and is more of a gamer, but the point at which he got nostalgic at Evangelion was a nice touch for his character.

Overall, Seiji Mizushima isn’t the best director, but he does have his good points in terms of characterization. Hanamaru Youchien in no way matches up to what I consider to be his best work: Ooedo Rocket, but it’s still turned out surprisingly charming and Tsuchida and the various adults turned out to be surprisingly good straight men and women so that the kids could go wild with their imaginations. Compare that to Bottle Fairy, which had a similar premise, and it does turn out differently because the adults are more than just walking dictionaries, and have their own lives and identities here.

Also, if you’re wondering why I’m not saying much about the actual content of this series: I can’t. I mean, they’re mostly just random adventures that just need to be watched. I’d much rather talk about the bigger picture in this series’ case. Because seriously: I have no idea what to comment on Koume’s romantic adventure for example.
Rating: * (Good)

Tsuchida surely sucks at reading books. What the hell is he doing, criticising a manga for 5-year-olds for being not realistic enough? 😛

Still, the first half of this episode pleasantly surprised me. A huge theme of this show is role-playing and that cheesy romantic scenario that the kids came up with was really cute, and hilarious to watch. In a way, this series is also a very subtle parody-series, which also comes forth in the EDs. I by the way really like that this show is going for a different ED every episode. Nice touch.

The second half saw Tsuchida away, and Anzu spent all her time with Yamamoto who had to fill in for him. I’m glad that we at least got a bit of a more colourful look at Yamamoto. It still doesn’t help that she’s completely clueless about romantic issues, but this half was enjoyable enough.
Rating: * (Good)

So overall this show turned out enjoyable enough, though not anything special. There’s one thing I don’t like, though: Yamamoto. Seriously, I’m surprised that she hasn’t sprouted wings and flown to heavens yet. I know that there’s purity and all, but that woman really takes the cake. It would have been nice if her total cluelessness was some sort of a novelty, but just about every love triangle in anime has it. What does this show hope to achieve by following this completely pointless bandwagon?

This episode featured a bunch more cliches that you’d usually see in high school romances, but I guess that that was necessary to flesh out the characters. As long as the future episodes aren’t going to repeat it, I don’t see much of a problem.

One thing that I’ve noticed from this series is that it likes to put tropes of other kinds of series into its setting of a kindergarten. I also recognize some parts of Great Teacher Onizuka in Tsuchida: he too makes friends with his students by placing himself on their equal level. At least, with everyone aside from Anzu.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Oh, screw it. I know I said that I was going to blog Nodame Cantabile’s Finale, but I really fail to see why that would be interesting. I know myself by now. I’m going to spend every episode complaining at how it doesn’t live up to the spectacular first season, and continue to talk down to a series that would otherwise have been at least a bit of a decent romantic comedy. In the end, the first episode of the new season showed enough to me, in the way that it overplayed Nodame’s antics too much. To me, it feels like this season’s Noitamina is wasted.

So yeah. I can try to sugarcoat it, but why bother. At this point, I’ve covered eighteen seasons of anime at this blog, and I consider this one to be the worst out of all of them. I very often disagree with those “worst season ever”-comments, and with a good reason: usually there are all sorts of underrated gems that are being ignored. But this season… I just can’t make any cheese out of it. Not only is the season itself incredibly small, there also are so few series that carried over from previous seasons.

At this point, there are only five series that I’d consider truly excellent: Armed Librarians, Durarara, Cross Game, Full Metal Alchemist and Marie & Gali. Depending on how they turn out, I can only see Sora no Oto if its uses its characters right and Ookami Kakushi if it gets its pacing right joining this list. That’s a definitive low in all of the eighteen seasons I’ve covered so far. So yeah, with that I’m stuck with really old series (Seikai no Monshou), guilty pleasures (Cobra), shows that are never meant for greatness but have one or two nice things (Kobato and Letter Bee), shows and OVas that only air once a month (Katanagatari and there are a number of OVAs that air in a few months that I want to cover) and… this.

Again, I’m not expecting the next GA or Ooedo Rocket here. All I want from this series is entertainment until this season is over, and at that area it pretty much delivers. It’s obvious problem is that the moeblobs here don’t really feel like actual kids, especially Anzu and Hiiragi are way overdone, and that story that the headmistress told, about how all kids would magically adapt the personality of their teacher was just stupid. Though Tsuchida himself and the other teachers are pretty nice to watch, and the chemistry between the characters is also pretty nice.

What I also want from this show is creativity. At this point, I don’t really care whether or not the characters in this series are stereotypes. I’m happy enough about the lack of teenagers (just about the only thing at which this season DOESN’T disappoint: the teenagers for once aren’t dominating the different series). What I want from this show is creative situations that the characters were put in. And the ED was actually pretty much what I meant. I never saw it coming that the creators would pull a space opera parody with these kinds of characters.

I’m not sure whether I’m going to have enough to say about every single episode, but ah well. For now, who cares?
Rating: (Enjoyable)