JK Meshi!

I found this Anime fairly enjoyable and as such gave it a 7/10, with 5 being in my view average and anything higher being better, of course.

You might wonder why and it's because of the purpose of this anime. This anime is (as the show itself will even say!) A fairly cheaply made anime but one with charm. The voice acting is quite good and the DVDs you can get (at least they're purchasable in Japan!) come with a Karaoke-style script you can follow along for 2 of the episodes to help people practice or even just try voice acting. The spirit of the show, ... to me at least is all about making something from very little and indeed the dishes in the show are quite easy to make and don't require much effort. The show also mentions many times how they wish to help others with voice acting and indeed if you look at the profiles of the three voice actresses, they got their start on this show and later starred in quite a few other anime.

In an objective sense, there is not much in the way of actual animation, which is of course a bad aspect of the show. The in-joke made by the show about a show identical to it being cheaply made with only 3 voice actresses did not come across to me (as it seems to have to others) as a way to garner pity. Instead I just felt that the show was poking fun at itself and not being too serious about itself, which is a good thing for anime seen as 'bad' by many.

In the end, this anime helped launch the careers of the voice actresses involved and likely with the DVD's Karaoke-style scripts, potentially inspired others to take up voice acting and so while not ever being on the level of a show like K-On in terms of animation, contributed more to anime than an anime that is actually 'bad'

Or in the words of Anton Ego from Ratatouille "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

Many people miss that this project was more about showcasing and holding an event related to recruiting and encouraging up-coming seiyuu. For that reason, the animation is quite downplayed. It's more like a radio or short drama CD with flash animations as an after-thought.

Some of the banter is witty. It covers a large variety of topics, so the odds are decent of it hitting on something of interest to you at least once. If you don't come in expecting hidden depths, you'll at least find some running character jokes and that the girls are distinct and play certain set roles in manzai like bits. ... The show is quite self aware, and just as the meals cooked aren't meant to be gourmet, this is not meant to be more than a fun snack of an anime.

You'll mostly enjoy it if you enjoy audio dramas. If you're not into those, you'll probably hate this, expecting more of the common visual focus of anime. Sadly, the seiyuu do not have much great chemistry bouncing off of each other, either, but their individual performances save it and make it successful at what it's trying to be, despite some below average elements.

JK Meshi is the only anime I've ever seen that's so unbelievably bad that they literally had to have an episode where they straight-up admitted to having the lowest TV-ratings of the season, the worst production value and just being plain uninteresting, solely in order to try and score some sympathy points from their audience. When an anime is so embarrassingly awful that the best the show can do is make fun of its own miserable self, that's when you know you've hit rock bottom. And rightfully so, because this is the absolute worst anime I've *ever* seen.

In short, JK Meshi is a short ... series about three girls who every week discuss random trivia with each other for a minute or two, have a meal together, and then the episode is over. Nothing more, nothing less. End of story. But unlike your typical plotless slice of life comedy, in JK Meshi's case I legitimately don't understand what the purpose of the show is. Like it's not even a matter of taste really. Case in point: this is NOT a show meant for entertainment. There is ZERO enjoyment value in it. Why? Because it's an educational program. Literally the only thing it gives you is random trivia to learn. But the trivia is like elementary school level in terms of difficulty, for example “did you know that the capital of Australia is not actually Sydney, but Canberra?” Uhm yeah, I've known that since I was like 10 years old or something even if I live on the other side of the globe, thank you very much. Like who is this supposed to be aimed at? Elementary schoolers? Yeah right, good luck finding a 12-year-old who willingly watches lame educational programs on TV in their own spare time, not to mention that this is a late-night anime and thus evidentially not a kids' show. And adults should already know pretty much all these things given how basic it is. In other words... it's not just that the show is bad, but *there is no target demographic at all*. I find it sincerely baffling. I have no idea what the writers were thinking when they came up with this script.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, there's another equally horrendous aspect of this show. To put it bluntly, the animation quality is about 20 years outdated. When watching JK Meshi... if your eyes could puke... they would. The best way I can phrase it is that it looks just like an amateur made it in Flash in an hour or two of their spare time. It's just *that* bad. I can't believe something so putrid-looking was aired on TV in the year 2016. Like were they even trying when they made this show? The entire thing just feels like an intentional joke to me. If this is actually the best a studio can come up with, my faith in the anime industry is taking a serious blow here. Granted the producers of JK Meshi are some total unknowns as far as I know but still.

JK Meshi might be worth watching just for the rather... *unique* experience it provides, but otherwise I'd recommend you to stay away. FAR away.