Or does it? If you look past the CG animation and watch through the first episode, you will discover right away that this is a series filled to brim with anime trope parodies. Its OP sequence goes through, with almost methodical precision, every cut you can expect to see in an anime opening, while the lyrics provide instant narration. "And now we're running! And now we're reaching out our hands! As long as we keep this up, we'll have a real anime opening in no time!" Similar parody is seen frequently throughout the series, with topics ranging from anime hair colours, to overly powerful student councils, and even to the way anime schools never seem to have male students. It's always hilarious to see this show pick out, with such unerring accuracy, the little flaws and irregularities of anime that every other series has come to ignore.
The humour extends beyond parodies of the anime medium. Tesagure! describes the activities of the Tesaguri-bu, a club dedicated to letting its members grope for their respective interests. As such, every episode has them discussing a different club activity they could take part in. This opens up into a systematic break-down of activities as they are portrayed in anime and manga, with the characters very wittily pointing out illogical features of each. But it doesn't stop there. The characters spend roughly half of each episode brainstorming ways to improve upon the activity under discussion, each coming up with their own 'New XXX club'. ”新しい”, "new", is a word you're going to hearing a lot when you watch this show. The brainstorm segment is generally the highlight of each episode, as the ideas thrown out are deliberately ridiculous and very funny. It's because of this random humour that even people who don't watch a lot of anime can appreciate a lot of the comedy in this show.
As a matter of fact, much of what makes this show funny besides the continually inserted jokes is the characters themselves. The main cast (four of them, and of course all girls) each come off as having distinct personalities and play each other off very well in their separate roles, from Koharu the naive kouhai to Hina the mysterious (and floating) senpai. Cliches they may be, but as a unit they work very well, and their energy alone is enough to make even unfunny jokes crack a laugh.
It is a unique feature of this show's production that allows the characters to interact so realistically and with such energy. While most anime are animated and then dubbed over, Tesagure! has its audio recorded and then the animation made to match. Supposedly, parts of the dialogue are also improvised, resulting in moments when the characters talk over one another or bend double in laughter for seconds on end. These are small details, but they really solidify the character interactions of the show. If you were to watch Tesagure! with your eyes closed, the group of girls joking on your screen might not be just the two dimensional characters seen everywhere else. For once, they could be real people, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Tesagure! is, as a result, one of the truest and most entertaining pure slice of life series in the anime medium. Juggernauts like K-ON! and YuruYuri feature with a good mix of slice of life and drama, and so become as entertaining as they are. For Tesagure! to reach similar heights of entertainment with its far lower production quality and nothing but slice of life should be a testament to how well this show is executed. If there ever comes a day when an English fansub group picks this up and subs it in full, do yourself a favour and watch it. If nothing else, you will be impressed with a very strong sense of the 新しい.
