Now 12 episodes later I can now officially do a review of this particular series, the series that everyone was pretty much talking about. So I'll mention my personal opinions about it, what the company "Lerche" did great on and also mention what they need to work on, without further ado, let's review "Gakkou Gurashi".
Story:
The series talks about a club called "The School Living Club", a group of four girls and their young dog living in the school, however there's a reason why they are living in the school, which is explained in the anime (I'll give hints but no major spoilers ;))
I have to admit that I was one of those people that liked the storyline ever since the first episode, there were some great things but at the same time there's flaws. So I'll mention them here.
Pros:
• Mainly focuses on the main characters, you get to know more about their backstory, how the club was developed and how the characters get along.
• Each episode had a cliffhanger and makes the viewers want to know more about what will happen next in the series.
• From the beginning to the end, it made you question about what will happen to the characters and so on until you watch the end and find out that most of the questions have been answered.
Cons:
• The Moe / comedy and dark themes do NOT mix. This is the one of those problems that people had when they were watching the series. It makes the viewers think if they're supposed to consider the series as a serious one or a comedy especially due to the situation.
• There is a lot of filler moments in this series, moments that were very unnecessary, such as the comedy moments. They're supposed to deal with a serious situation, not moments where they're supposed to have fun and forget about what's happening around them, which happens often in the series.
• Not going to say everything wasn't predictable, but there's certain things that were predictable, one of them being the school environment later on in the series. They did an excellent job making things unpredictable in the first episode but as the series goes on, you realize certain things that have been pointed out in the series.
Art:
Pros:
• The series is unique and has its own art style.
• The characters were well designed, the expressions for each of the characters shows the emotions for any situation and the creators developed great outfits for each character making them unique in certain ways.
• The environments were done well as each environment expresses a certain mood, depending on the situation, if it's happy and cheerful, they make it like nothing happened, if its dark, they make it dark and gloomy.
• If you compare the art between the manga and the anime, it is quite similar so they did manage to get the same type of art style as the manga.
Con:
• Like the story, Moe and dark themes don't work too well together. It would have been better if they stuck to one of them instead of both.
Sound:
Pro:
• Each OST was done well, it expresses the moods of the situation, if the situation is a Moe moment, they have cheerful music playing, if it's a sad moment, they make the music sound very sad and so on and so forth.
• The ending themes were okay too but the one theme that I've enjoyed the most out of this series was the Opening. If all you heard was the Opening without seeing the intro, you would imagine this as a cheerful and catchy opening theme, you would never expect it to be dark anime series. If you watch the intro from the first episode, it looks like another "slice of life" anime, but as the series goes on, the intro changes but the song stays the same, I know there may be other anime that did the same thing but this is an amazing idea that I don't often see which makes the Opening even more enjoyable to watch. I always get excited whenever the intro came on because I always wanted to know what they're going to change next and what they'll change it into. It's a very enjoyable intro to watch and a very catchy song to listen to.
Cons:
I seriously have no cons for this anime when it comes to sound as personally the music was fine the way it was.
Characters:
Pros:
• Each character has her own unique personality which makes each of the characters stand out from one another. (Examples: Yuki being the energetic and positive one, Miki being the serious one, Yuuri being the leader type and Kurumi being the cheerful type and the one with the shovel).
• The minor characters are mentioned time to time, we get an understanding of what the minor characters were like, both appearance and personality.
Cons:
• Like the soundtrack, I can't really complain about the characters.
Enjoyment:
Personally, I thought the show was pretty entertaining, sure it had some slow and mostly comedic moments but it had moments were it actually made you wonder about what will happen in the next episode. You hope for the best for each character as well as have concerns about the things around them. Characters and the soundtrack were awesome, the art is enjoyable to see however, the story should have been worked on a bit more.
Overall, a very enjoyable series and I highly recommend people to watch Gakkou Gurashi. The series is only 12 episodes so you can completely watch it within a couple of days. It was enjoyable to watch and a possibly a great anime to watch over again.
Overall: 8 / 10
