Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Recommendation: A truly great comedy, but western audiences and casual anime fans may have difficulty getting into it.

Manzai comedy can be hard to appreciate, especially for western audiences. That shouldn't scare you away from Teppen, but you'll want to be aware that you'll need to put in more work than usual to appreciate it. In all honesty, the manzai scenes are consistently the weakest parts of the series, but fortunately there aren't that many of them. This is more of a manzai-flavored CGDCT comedy series about the wacky daily lives of the 5 comedy trios staying in a dorm together than a show "about" manzai. ... The funniest parts usually have nothing to do with stand-up comedy at all and involve escalating idiotic behavior by the girls until it ends in a ridiculous place, like with the house blowing up or Jack Bauer from 24 breaking down their door (that last one is real by the way). There's a subtlety to it that makes it extra funny too, you feel rewarded for rewatching and digging into it to find jokes that you didn't catch the first time around, like Barbra being represented by a barber pole in the Teppen council meeting or Chihori creating the time loop in episode 4 to give Yuina extra time to practice her lines. It feels oddly high IQ for a show like this.

"They didn't have to go that hard" is really the feeling you get in every aspect of the series. It looks from the outside like a cheap cash in on a mobile game that doesn't actually exist, but instead it's filled with the kind of love and care that you'd typically see go into a passion project. The script is densely layered with jokes that aren't always immediately apparent, the animation is far above and beyond what you'd expect (the paintball fight from episode 3 is a particular highlight there), and the characters have tons of personality and are well voice-acted. Even the OP is brilliantly animated, and the song, which features the main cast rapping, is the best of the season by a mile (go listen to it if you don't believe me). It's a show that consistently exceeds expectations in every area.

There is one major caveat to the series though. It is, for lack of a better term, extremely Japanese, and makes zero effort to round off its edges for western audiences. A number of jokes involve wordplay that is simply untranslatable to English, and there are constant cultural references to things casual western audiences would know little about (the group Akudare Kingdom is almost entirely built around stereotypes about Ibaraki Prefecture, for example). This is a series that is badly in need of translator notes and I had to rely on more knowledgeable friends to "get" some of it. It's still broadly funny in ways that will be recognizable to everyone, but some of the best material is only going to be accessible to fluent Japanese speakers or those with extensive cultural knowledge.

This is not the kind of show that everyone is going to enjoy, but it ended up being one of my favorites of Summer 2022 and I have so much respect for the obvious effort that was put into infusing this show with soul and personality when it could have easily been a bloodless corporate tie-in. Even if manzai is a hard pass for you, give Teppen a chance. It will probably surprise you.

Here I am, questioning to myself again: yet another manzai comedy? And after the blandness that is Maesetsu! that only really speaks to the native Japanese (which everyone else will not understand), is Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And yes, that is 15 exclamation marks, the most after Keijo with 8) gonna be any different? In a hopeful way, I wish I do, because of all the manzai comedy that has been seen, Teppen is easily the best out of the lot that I remember, though not without its issues.

We all understand comedy in all sorts of various ways. But when if it's one that's ingrained only to a ... certain demographic, that honestly is a bit hard to justify its existence to everyone else. And this is exactly what Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! has going for it, being a Japanese manzai a.k.a stand-up comedy that's all the rage in Japan as a traditional pastime. Unfortunately, if you don't understand much about that, I can tell you that it's hard to really love this show for all that's worth of its various references and such.

The basis for Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is exactly what it sounds like: a group of girls incorporated into a competition (the Teppen Grand Prix) from the views of 3 new and aspiring young rookies (Yayoi Sakamoto, Yomogi Takahashi and Yuzu Hosono) whom want to make it big with comedy, and finding themselves living together with other groups with their own quirks and features, all in the vying to win the competition with the best they could. And I'll say that I give marks for some originality that's done here to showcase the various groups according to their regions (Young Wai-wai from Kansai (region), Celebri-Tea from Tokai, Akudare Kingdom from Kanto, Invaders from Hokkaido, and Bullet Kunoichi from Kansai (area)) and fully establishing the real-life counterpart identities from where they come from, for all 15 girls.

As for the part of the show that supposedly wants to make the audience "Laughing 'til You Cry"...well that is pretty much a mixed bag. You either love it or find it boring (as is my case) that some references will be generally understood, but for a comedy skit performance, it isn't as refined as say the CGDCT moments for the group that lives in Takako-so under the watch of "Onegai Muscle" rip-off Manager-cum-caretaker Seiji Tani. Throughout the course of the anime showing the groups' various skits (at least on my watch), most of them were quite boring but not stale, as per the motive to infuse comedy where it works best. To this I say, maybe you can understand the inference better than I do, and there're two sides to the comedy coin in this case.

The most impressive I've seen from this show is the mixed usage of Seiyuus that for a large character cast such as this, they did their job well to retain the feeling of infused, fine comedy. And this is brought forward to the OP, which is the most creative that I've both seen and heard of others calling it a banger, and it's not without reason that its over-the-top goofiness allows to embrace its intentions wholeheartedly. And largely for that, it succeeded. May'n's ED isn't half bad either, now that I think of it, especially when the OST is that subpar and generic, there were a few standouts, though it honestly didn't make my experience watching this any better, even with studio Drive's whack-outta-the-wazoo like visuals, which also got the job done as it should.

It's absurd, it's wacky, it's just comedy. And believe me, I've tried to like Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and what it has going for it, but it's just boring and ludicrious to sit for 12 episodes expecting to understand references and body jokes, to the point of messing with my brain and thinking: "Comedy can be better than this, and it doesn't have to be limited after all."

Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s definitely not a snoozefest, but a sleepfest of a dream with sheep baaing question marks on top of my head, now that's more affirmative.

Even despite how Japanese-centered the comedy is, even if you can understand most of the jokes and gags, the fact of the matter is that Teppen !x15 is simply not that funny. It has funny moments, and the characters are slightly unique, but the jokes in this anime are not what you'd expect from "professional" comedians even though we're expected to believe they're the best of the best and the audience is supposedly laughing along with you as the story plays out. There were a few good gags and jokes, sure, of course there were, but any semi-decent slice of life has some comedy bits ... here and there. I felt more obligated to laugh at parts than actually naturally laugh. Unlike something like Joshiraku where we laugh because of the characters' developments on the side of their profession, Teppen !x15 is literally about their comedy, which brings in even higher expectations, yet fails to deliver. Also, the whole actual driving plot was totally left on the side which was a real shame. Honestly, this anime had so much potential, but went in a completely wrong direction.

All in all, it's a comedy anime that focuses on top-notch comedy, yet doesn't get any funnier than your average rom-com. You're better off watching Joshiraku even if you don't understand the jokes because at least most of the setups are somewhat decent. Or better yet, just watch an actual funny gag anime like Asobi Asobase and Joushikousei no Mudazukai. It should honestly be labled more as a CGDCT and leave it at that. The girls are cute and fun, but that's about it.

As a side note, I have to say that the visuals for the OP were absolutely stunning. It's weird because it's not super flashy or has crazy effects, but seeing how they animated the girls and backgrounds was just so pleasing to look at. I watched the OP every single episode and partially finished the anime at all just to keep looking at the OP. The song itself isn't anything crazy either. I've seen worse, but it's not playlist-breaking either. 8/10 on the OP for sure (only -2 cuz song)

Overall, 4/10 for being somewhat average, but failing to adhere to the expectations of the main focus of the entire story, comedy.