Tono to Issho is one of the series that will be debuting in the upcoming Summer Season, but first a one-shot OVA premiered as some sort of prequel and introduction. To be honest, before watching this OVA I was actually looking forward to a bit of comedic history. After watching it however, I’m considering it to be a strong candidate for the ‘worst show of the season’. It’s unbelievable how incredibly boring this show turned out. It’s just… not funny.
I know that comedy can be something very subjective, but seriously, this OVA had some of the worst comedic timing I’ve seen in a long while now. Every single voice actor always takes about a second of a breath after every single freaking sentence. Jokes that should be quick and fast are here unbelievably slow. Especially during the points at which the creators feel like they’ve made an exceptionally clever pun, they make sure to give the viewer the chance to let this joke sink in.
To add to that, the jokes themselves are corny as hell, and all follow the same pattern: a character does something random. A straight man then yells and makes a weird face. More series of course make use of these kinds of jokes, but this show just shamelessly rips these things off without understanding what makes them work. I had to sit through that same pattern being repeated over and over for nearly forty minutes. This is something that you show someone you really don’t like or something.
And if that wasn’t enough, the characters themselves also have this horrible tendency of dragging any joke they make on beyond belief. Jokes that would have been cute if they were just delivered in fifteen seconds are spread out over five minutes as the creators make sure to milk every bit of boredom from them.
I think out of all the series I have even written for this site, I have never given a rating as low as this one. I admit that I have seen worse anime, (Himitsu Kessha blahblah Countdown and Abunai Sisters), but this one had the bad luck to be a one-shot OVA, and I actually think that it’s the worst non-recap anime I have ever managed to finish. Seriously, if this was five minutes long (with the same content), it would have been a fun though cute OVA. But this… there’s a limit to human tolerance and how badly you can deliver jokes. If this is what we’re going to have to go through for the TV-series… god… I don’t want to imagine that…
| Storytelling: | 2/10 – Does just about everything wrong in terms of comedic delivery. |
| Characters: | 2/10 – Absolutely terrible. Takes famous characters from the Sengoku era… and turns them into a bunch of dull idiots who only have one quirk and nothing more. Yes, EVEN the main character. |
| Production-Values: | 3/10 – Nothing about the graphics is inspired, and at the end the animators just give up and wiggle a bunch of random drawings of people across the screen. |
| Setting: | 4/10 – At least gets some points for a bunch of historic references, but never does anything with them. |
Suggestions:
– Gintama
– Gag Manga Biyori
– Sexy Commando Gaiden
These three shows are everything that this cheap excuse of an anime is trying to be.
Wow! This is possibly the second lowest rating you’ve ever given an anime in like…EVER! Kinda refreshing for once. Plus I wasn’t planning on watching the TV series anyway. Doesn’t interest me.
What, there is a comedy show thats worse than Gintama ? Thats unlikely.
Ahhh- drama done badly is funny, but comedy done badly is just unwatchable.
Wow! Well at least now I know where your lower boandaries are. Sorry you had to sit through that. Maybe you should get yourself a slice of pie and a nice cuppa tea … put you back in a good mood.
Since you ticked my curiosity, I gave this OVA a try to see how bad it could be. I think it’s not that bad! The jokes are unoriginal, yeah, but I think the way they handled them is decent enough. I actually got some laughs during watching it. It’s just an episode to introduce all the characters in the new anime and I think it got its job done. But if the whole new anime is like this then I’m certainly not interested. 🙂
The anime’s quite good, of course there are much better shows to watch.
If you know the history of Japan, historial character and added with a lower appreciation of jokes, you will learn to appreciate the laughter on how the script write make fun and translate those fearless samurai to kinki idiots.