GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class – 05

Yeah yeah, I know. I’m blogging another moe series. But seriously, the second episode took like what… FOUR WEEKS to get subbed? Talk about the dark horse of the season: that’s the kind of release schedule you’d expect from your average World Masterpiece Theatre or Osamu Dezaki series, not a show about lots of moe schoolgirls… But yeah, that’s pretty much why I decided to blog this series: because of the lack of subs I’ve been following this series raw and I like it a lot, but the dialogue turned out to be surprisingly difficult for a series that’s about a bunch of 15-year-old schoolgirls and has no plot whatsoever. By writing about it, I hope to be able to catch more of the countless jokes and details that the creators threw in it. My Japanese is far from perfect, so do note that I could make mistakes here and there. The first half of this episode starts with the GA members handing in some assignments, in which they had to design items that people use every day. Nozaki first came with a vaccuum cleaner, Tomokane took way too much creative freedom in creating a UFO, while Yamaguchi created a cup (which she ironically used to fake a cup she previously knocked over). Yamaguchi and Nozaki obviously get the advice to be a bit more creative. In the next round, Yamaguchi comes with a bunny-shaped cellphone, while Tomokane comes in with a desk. In the next round, Nozaki delivers a copying machine, with Tomokane comes with a bunch of cheap ideas, like pasting her previous desk below a bunch of bookcases. And a desk whose drawers have eyes. Noda in the meantime rips off some of Tomokane’s ideas throughout the sketch. A running theme throughout that sketch was Yamaguchi knocking over the teacher’s cups over and over, so in the end she delivers a cup warmer. The next part of the episode was about the Nozaki’s birthday. Since she didn’t announce it, nobody could prepare anything for her. Tomokane comes with a hastily drawn gift token (I hope that that’s the right word for it in English). Yamaguchi gave her a picture book. Oomichi and Noda meanwhile organize a small birthday party after classes, in one of the art club’s empty classrooms, it seems, in which they all have a drink. The subject then turns over to these drinks and some word puns that only the Japanese can pull off (like wondering who it was who hit Fruits Punch). The rest of this episode was about the strange other art club that took up most of the third episode. It’s very strange, because whenever they pop up, the rest of the series also completely changes and becomes much more that of a traditional slice of life series about these people. I still find it strange that this series advertises itself as the “GA Art Design Club”, and yet we’ve already spent more than an entire episode to these guys… Anyway, the second half of the episode starts with them simply cleaning up their clubroom and getting rid of the stuff that they don’t use anymore (including a strange doghouse that the club-president was sleeping in). The president (I believe her name was Awara Chikako) is pretty much the oddball of that club, and obviously tries to get away from having to clean. When she does end up helping out (as in, ordering everyone around), she finds a book back that she thought she had long lost. In the same process, Homera finds a bunch of soda cans that turn out to be more than ten years old. The next part of this episode starts when “Same-sensei” (who apparently got her nickname when she first introduced herself in front of a class and got too scared to speak straight) comes in the room, searching for her colleague. The next teacher to visit the room is Kotoma, who seems to be looking for some past work that is stored in the clubroom. For some reason, some of the older members are shocked by this and start fearing for their lives. It turns out that these works are stored in a particularly dirty room that doesn’t seem to have been cleaned for many years. It seems that it once belonged to a yet another art club, which seems to be long gone now. Awara then comes with a story of how once someone was chased by a ghost when he tried to enter it, and that ghost somehow turned into a strange mannequin that’s in the clubroom. We then see a bit of back-story on how the doghouse came to be, as it turned out to have been an attempt to make Awara stop whining. It’s broken now anyway, as Awara brings the remains to the local garbage collection place. The episode then ends with the GA club, as they try to go home as it’s raining outside. The ED this time seems to have been sung by Horie Yui, who voices Nozaki. This is one of these series in which all of the main voice actress get to have a go at singing the ED, which makes me wonder what the creators are going to do with the next episode: are they just going to start with Miyuki Sawashiro, who voiced the first one, or are they going to try something different? In any case, I know that this is not a summary blog. There was a time in which I would write an incredibly detailed summary for every single series that I was blogging, but after a while it just became way too tiring to continue doing that and so I instead changed the focus of this blog on storytelling. Nevertheless, having one show to summarize each week shouldn’t be that much of a problem, and I had a lot of fun writing this entry and figuring out what’s going on. This episode wasn’t the best we’ve seen from this show right now, and the characters have a long way to go before they become as good and enjoyable as Hyakko, which I didn’t end up blogging, but I like the focus on art. I like how the characters in this series already know how to draw, and are instead now looking at expressing their creativity and putting them to practical use. It’s very close to my personal interests, and I don’t think that any similar series is going to pop up any time soon. And besides, it has the director from Les Miserables. Is there any way you can go wrong with that? ^^; Rating: * (Good)]]>