Ranked #2471

Gokujou Seitokai

In my personal opinion, Gokujou Seitokai is the type of anime that would be categorized as "over-looked." The characters look like your typical school girls at first, and I'm sure for anyone who looked twice at this series, the puppet, Pucchan, was probably one of the only things that caught your eye. I know it did for me. Another thing that might make you say "to heck with it" is the cliché fact that it revolves around an all powerful student council (seitokai).

One day I just happened to be looking through an old 2007 edition of Newtype, and I noticed that the centerfold poster was of some anime called "Best Student Council," and that there was a really weird looking puppet-thing in it. After reading a short article about it in the magazine, I thought to myself, "Whoa, this sounds so retarded." About a month later, I got bored and decided that, "Hey, maybe I'll give that dumb sounding anime a shot."

Wow, were my initial thoughts wrong.

Our story begins with our main protagonist, Rino, who is on her way to Miyagami Academy thanks to her mysterious penpal, only known as "Mr. Poppit." After a course of events, she finds herself homeless and hopelessly lost in the woods on the way to Miyagami Academy. It is then that she encounters a few members of the school's elite "Best Student Council," or better known as "Gokujou Seitokai." The next day, after another set of events, Rino finds herself as the new secretary for the Gokujou Seitokai. From that point on in the story, we meet the other members of the Gokujou Seitokai and learn of their pasts, presents, and possible future. All of these events aren't exactly original or unique, but each situation works well and entertains the viewer in a good way, especially surprising the viewer with it's several small, but unexpected plot twists. To wrap it up, the story is basically a cross between comedy, silliness, totally crazy antics, slice-of-life, and a little dash of drama and some very, very small shoujo-ai undertones (If you do not like shoujo-ai, do not fret. The series only has a few moments in it that you could possibly categorize as quote "shoujo-ai." The small signs of shoujo-ai are drowned out by comedy, so like I said, do not fret or overreact, and do not let that change your opinion of it or change your willingness to watch the series.). If you like any of these elements, then I'm sure you'd find it interesting to see them all blended together in one anime.

Next we have the characters, which are all mainly from the Gokujou Seitokai or are somehow related to and/or associated with them. These characters are pretty much what make up the majority of the enjoyableness of the show. Again, not really unique or original in this field either (excluding Pucchan because c'mon, how many anime do you know that have a sarcastic talking puppet?), but like I said about the plot, it works. The cast is exceptionally large with each character having their own distinct personality and traits, so if you didn't like one character, I'm sure you'd like another. It was almost as if the characters were made that way so that everyone could have at least one favorite.

The overall art and animation of Gokujou Seitokai was what I felt was its weakest point. It was average in practically every way. There were a lot of bright colors and plenty of cute girls with slightly pudgy faces that all looked distinctly different from each other to catch your eye (Plus Pucchan because we all know that he is the most attractive character in the series. Just sayin'…), but aside from the main character designs, everything else was really lacking, the backgrounds just to name one. They were pretty much simple, not entirely bad, just lacking a bit. Same goes with the clothes designs and the supporting characters that only made an appearance for one or two episodes. Again, don't get me wrong, the art and animation was not entirely bad, I just think that they could have put just a tiny bit of a little extra effort into it.

Along with the characters, I think that the sound was Gokujou Seitokai's second strongest point. We had a lot of well known seiyuu piled together, such as Yukari Tamura, Chiwa Saito, Yuki Matsuoka, and Tomoko Kawakami just to name a few. Each of their voices added to the characters' personalities, which coincides with my opinions of each character. To me honestly, the voice acting was excellent, not exceedingly excellent, just excellent in its own way. Besides the voice acting, there was the background music and the opening and ending themes to consider. I didn't particularly love the background music, some was a little overpowering and not well suited to the mood of the plot and events happening, but I suppose overall it worked out okay, seeing as I didn't have a huge problem with it as a whole. As for the opening theme, it was cute and light-hearted like the rest of the series and sounded okay in my opinion. It was the ending themes, however, that I really liked. They were comprised of four of the Gokujou Seitokai members' and Rino's seiyuu singing it, and they honestly were pretty cute and catchy.

Overall, I'd say that Gokujou Seitokai is definitely an enjoyable and underrated series. I personally enjoyed it a lot, and my views on it from the beginning changed from thinking the anime was stupid to respecting it for what it is and for what it puts out to us, the viewers and fans. I even got a little teary-eyed in the end. So if you are reading this now and debating on whether or not Gokujou Seitokai is the anime for you, give it a try; I guarantee that it will most likely be worth your while. read more

Gokujou Seitokai is a lovely, rather under-appreciated series. Certainly if it were defined by its genre (a school comedy), it would not stand out from the million other school comedies, all with more cute, young characters filled to the brim with moeness (and who induce purely visceral "kyaaa!", squeals, or nosebleed reactions).

Gokujou Seitokai follows the formulaic school comedy idea fairly closely, and boasts a rather, if you will, cliché student council centric cast. But this is also where this series shines. I left something out when I said this series fell into the school comedy genre because technically speaking, this is a satirical school comedy.

We need not go far to find evidence of this; just the title of this series alone has satirical elements to it. "Seitokai", as you might already know, means "student council". "Gokujou", then, is actually an abbreviation-- the full title of this series should actually be Miyagami Gakuen Gokudai Kengen Hoyuu Saijoukyuu Seitokai (Miyagami Academy Maximum Authority Holders Ultimate Level Student Council). I hardly need to point out it pokes fun at ridiculously long titles and names for things to make them sound impressive (think "ultimate attacks" in fighting anime series). Because of this satirical take, the series is not hindered but actually made better by its simple and rather predictable storyline.

Art-wise, it's fair enough to not really bother you either way. The animation is less than stellar, and sometimes you're left wondering where the heck the characters are looking at since they usually seem to have far-off gazes to their eyes. It shouldn't bug the average anime viewer very much, though. I didn't even notice it when I watched it the first time around. Colour-wise, this series goes with softer pastel colours, and it really goes well with the vibrant cheeriness that Gokujou Seitokai exudes.

The OP and ED are very good, in my opinion. Before I really get into the songs, I must say, it's particularly surprising that Gokujou Seitokai isn't more popular. It has an astounding seiyuu cast, with most (I'm talking 75% and above) being veterans and solidly A-list seiyuu. I won't elaborate too much on this since not everyone is into seiyuu (or even original Japanese audio), but if you are interested in seiyuu, I urge you to take a look at the cast. And although it has an impressive seiyuu cast, I can't give higher than 8/10 because there weren't any gut-wrenchingly mind-blowing scenes for the seiyuu to perform at their full capacity.

Now, the songs. Tamura Yukari sings the upbeat, cheery OP. It works, to say the least, since Tamura has one of the most moe voices I know. Oh, and this might be a concern for less serious anime goers. You may find the protagonist (voiced by Tamura) to be a little too high-pitched. I remember it getting on my nerves before I got my bearings and got used to the relatively high-pitched voices for girls in anime. The ED is very good too, and it's sung by several veteran seiyuu.

So... to put it shortly, I think this is a series I'd recommend to anyone who likes school comedies. It's suitable for all levels of viewers. Less serious anime viewers will like it for the hilarity, and people who've watched a gazillion school comedies will probably like it for the satirical elements. It also has vague (but very there) f/f vibes. It's played up for comedic value, but yuri fans will probably like it as well. (Anti-yuri people probably won't mind it, since as I said, it's played for comedy.) One thing to note, however, is that this does not have seinen-esque fanservice in the manner of cleavage shots or I-see-your-panties-and-get-massive-nosebleed gags despite the entirely female cast. Comedy and satire carry this series through. read more