One Off

"One Off" is a very simple story. It's all about overcoming the obstacle of negative thinking, things that you may think are impossible can actually be more easily attainable when you are working towards that goal and thinking positively. If anything, you will feel better.
Nothing good comes from negative thinking except for just that, more negative thinking.

This is your basic slice of life story with mopeds, motorcycles, the eagerness to travel, and Honda (yes, the vehicle company) as the main subjects. With one of the best directors when it comes to slice of life works, Junichi Sato.

It's not original, but does anyone really expect that when it comes to slice of life stories? I like it, it's executed well, has a great atmosphere, and is fun to watch if you like slice of life stories.

The art is excellent, very much up to standards here.

The music is very well done, the opening by RoundTable is always a nice touch in an anime, and the ending and insert songs are pretty catchy as well.
The seiyuu act their characters with great enthusiasm.

There's not much character here, but the little that there is, serves well enough for the story and execution.
For a slice of life series, there's actually a small bit of ecchi in this show, and that is the role of Cynthia (You'll see when you watch it).

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I enjoyed this short series more than I expected.

One Off serves as a feel good slice of life story that is as short as a motorcycle or moped ride to a convenience store.
It's very well done, and if there was more, I would watch it.

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I love Junichi Sato. I really do, despite the fact that I've only been exposed to a few of his works, and Tamayura happens to be my favorite. However...I can't believe I watched this piece of trash! It's a good thing it's only four fifteen-minute long episodes like the original Tamayura OVAs were, and whaddaya know! This is supposed to be a car advertisement, like how Hokago no Pleiades is! Ugh, I can't believe I wasted my time on this dumb OVA. It's such a shame, as this could have been a lot better, and the issues it tackled could have been handled more appropriately. This anime is sponsored by Honda Motors...but how do they start off? By bashing bicycles and introducing characters who are such blatant stereotypes that you can tell just from looking at them for a few seconds that you've seen this type of character before somewhere! A lot of people give Tamayura a lot of flak for supposedly being a K-On rip off, which I don't think is true. Heck, if there's a show haters should be calling a K-On rip-off, it's One Off!

The story's nothing special. Basically it's about a girl named Haruno who envies her friends for having dreams and ambitions they want to pursue and thinks she'll never be able to leave the rural town she lives in. Her jobs mostly consist of helping her parents at their restaurant and collecting eggs from chickens. All of a sudden, out appears this random, badly voiced Australian named Cynthia (who I swear to God is a rip-off of Cynthia from Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Look at their character designs! I'm not even kidding!) who does nothing but shout bad English and shove her cleavage into people's faces. You may think me saying that Haruno's life changes after that might be great, but...trust me, it's not.

Is it just me, or is the animation for this anime really blurry? The backgrounds look a lot more faded than crisp, like it was done by someone who couldn't afford money to buy glasses. Not only that, the movement that's there isn't very fluid. But ugh, I need to get this out, I HATE the character designs! Cynthia because she looks like a rip-off of Cynthia from Pokemon, which should be fairly obvious, but the girls' designs I don't like because....one: they look too much like rip-offs of other characters (I swear, Sayo looks almost EXACTLY like Tsuruko from AnoHana, right down to her seiyuu, who does the voice of Tsuruko as well!), two: I hate how anime over exaggerates and glorifies female legs! They always make it look like the top part of the leg, above the knee, is longer than the lower part of the leg, below the knee. You can tell just from looking at the promotional pictures alone that their legs are too odd-looking, which is especially exacerbated by the fact that they all wear skirts so short that if done in real life, you'd be able to see their undies no problem, and...that's NOT a compliment. I mean, look at the way the pig tailed girl is positioned in the promo art! Her legs are obviously too long, and she could be showing off her undies as we speak considering she's wearing a really short skirt and she's in a rather promiscuous position if you take it out of context. I'm not a thin person, and I never wear skirts, but I've looked in the mirror and pictured myself in short uniforms like this while taking human anatomy into account and quite honestly, if people actually wore uniforms like that in real life, then they'd be showing their undies off 24/7 considering the length of the skirt and how ungracefully exaggerated the legs are. And look at the way the blue haired girl is lying on the ground! Her rear end is right in view! See my point? And even her legs don't look right! Then again, none of them do! I wish anime would stop over exaggerating female body parts and making girls wear short skirts and actually respect realistic human anatomy already! It's driving me up the wall!

The only remotely good thing about this show is the music. I definitely liked the opening theme, as it's nice and soothing, and the ending themes are nice too, even though they're both a little dull. The rest of the soundtrack...eh, dull. Nothing ground-breaking or bad. Just...dull. I honestly don't remember. The soundtrack in itself is pretty bland and forgettable. I honestly don't remember one spec of it.

Ugh, the characters. I won't lie, these have to be the most blatant and most shallow stereotypes I've ever seen. None of the characters are properly or appropriately developed, they follow their assigned gimmick way too much, the very little pieces of personality they do have are obviously ripped off from characters from other anime I've seen before, and they're overall shallow and uninteresting. This is made worse by the absolutely abysmal voice acting! Haruno's seiyuu is trying way too hard, and that blue haired girl just refused to shut her freaking mouth! I wanted to mute the audio every time that stupid, annoying as heck blueberry head opened her mouth! All she did as scream and moan about not having a motorbike and squealing over how hot Cynthia is! Someone cut this character out of the show already! She's too much of a rip-off of Ritsu from K-On! The other characters are just bland and uninteresting. Cynthia has to be the worst Australian portrayal I've ever seen. I've never met an Australian before, but none I know talk in such bad English as she did, and none I know go around showing off their boobs (AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN WEAR A FREAKING BRA!!! WHAT THE ACTUAL FREAKSHOW?!?)! What especially appalled me is that despite her flaws, everyone suddenly likes her! WHAT THE FREAK DID SHE DO TO GET THEM TO LIKE HER?!? Show her boobs, of course! Oh God, even the characters' reactions to Cynthia are inappropriate and unrealistic! If I saw a woman like her showing off her boobs, I'd call the police and get her arrested for public nudity! It appalls me how anime characters love downplaying the flaws of a clearly problematic character and make them into a straight up object of desire for everyone! That must be why the trope Draco In Leather Pants exists. Heck, if anything, I consider Cynthia to be the very in-show embodiment of this trope!...AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY!

The rest of the show is just bad, bland, and downright boring. Even the supposed moral of the story is shallow and dumb, even cheesy because of the way it's executed. Everything else is just bad. The way the characters react to certain events: bad and unrealistic. All the coincidences: totally contrived and convoluted. The characters' voices: UGH MAKE THEM STOP TALKING! The whole girls riding motorbikes in the future. I can't see that. But from what I'm hearing, car sales are decreasing in parts of the world, so I guess it was to be expected that advertising companies would go to drastic measures to sell a product. But can we do it in a way that doesn't involve churning out stereotypes and beating dead horses PLEASE? I'm taking a class called Effects of Media on Children and one of my assignments involves analyzing how advertisements rely on gender stereotypes to sell a product and how they affect people of all ages. This is NOT a proper way to advertise a product.

Just watch this to consider buying a motorbike. Other than that, give it a miss. It's dumb, contrived, and really not worth your time.

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One Off is one of those Anime that is ideal if someone has an hour of free time on their hands and is in the mood for a slow paced slice of life storyline that goes at a slower pace then some of the other slow paced storylines out there. The charm of this Anime is in the basic, simple nature of the animation and music that allows the viewer to feel relaxed while watching. Some of the down sides though is the plot isn't as fleshed out as it could be as well as the characters, but then this was an OVA designed for advertisement purposes so this is rather expected.

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One Off was subbed yesterday and I already watched it 3 times. You may think that this anime must be pure awesome because I watched it 3 times in a day, but not exactly that. I just enjoyed it a lot.


That said, One Off is still pretty amazing anime for such a short series. The story is about these 5 girls, which names I don't know doing slice of life stuff, and they like motorbikes. The blue-haired girl is funny as hell. She has cutelittlefangs and she is master of the trope, google it if you don't know. Surpasses Tsuru-chan from Suzumiya Haruhi series, meaning blue-haired is hyperactive and propably has adhd, but I like her because she is funny and cute, and has blue hairs.

Girl with big tits is pretty much like blue-haired girl. She is damn funny, but has big tits instead of adhd. She would be pretty memorable character even if she had only small tits. I mean she is like Kaeda from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Kaeda always says part of her dialog in English which is also well-placed and makes it pretty hilarious. Big titted girl does the same as Kaeda and they have same voice actor so no wonder, and she can pronounce English well, so no awkward engrish here. Kaeda also has nice tits, btw, if you were wondering.

Rest of the characters aren't really all that memorable nor notable, I would still hug them all though. Someone but effort on their design as well. I mean e.g. one of them wears glasses so it's easy tell them apart and all. Pretty sure most of them are at least bi-curious so shoujo ai fans should enjoy them as well. They are also friends till the end of world and even further so it's pretty interesting to follow them doing their stuff and to see what kinda persons they are.

One Off also surpasses Code Geass in terms of advertising. Pretty sure everyone knows about Pizza Hut and C.C's pizza obsession and stuff like that. As I mentioned before, these girls like motorbikes. We have CBR and Monkey here and maybe some others I didn't notice. So you guessed it propably, this is worshipping Honda like no other anime. We even have guy who wears a cap with Honda text on it and things like that. Brilliant, really.

There is also story in this anime but I don't really know what it is about. One of these character want to go see the world or something and she is shy and likes big titted girl's CBR, and they ride together near the end. One other of the character have some special spot where she likes to be alone, but big titted girl comes there with her CBR and finds her special spot. The character get little development just like that I guess.


One Off is nowhere near the best anime ever made, but it doesn't try be like that either. It's pure slice of life comedy which you may or may not enjoy. I watched this somewhere around 3-4am and laughed around half of the 30 minutes long double-episode. For me this was really fun and entertaining watch and made me happy. I found pretty much everything in this to be hilarious. I don't know will you find this enjoyable but I advice to give it a try.

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