Wooser no Sono Higurashi

Wooser no Sono Higurashi is an anime from Sanzigen, one of the studios that worked on the Black Rock Shooter anime. It's based on a short journal column and aired in 2012. Let's take a look and see what it's all about.

Story:

There's not much story to the series. It's one of those comedies where events happen for humorous purposes and they never follow a real narrative arc. Basically, each episode consists of several short gag segments. It's like the anime equivalent of a Yonkoma (four panel) gag strip. So, that brings me to the important question, is it funny? It is sometimes. A lot ... of the jokes are basically Wooser being a bit perverted or random things happening. The pay-off can be funny but, more often than not, it just ends up being kind of stupid.

Characters:

The characters in this are pretty one-dimensional. They basically consist of a bunch of basic tropes with no development due to the nature of the series. To be fair, they could potentially work for a gag series except that their interactions aren't usually all that amusing. Compare it to a series like Galaxy Angel where the characters are also pretty undeveloped and tropey but where they interact with one another in a really strong comedic way. This one just falls woefully short. A lot of the characters who show up barely even say or do anything.

Art:

The art style is very basic and undetailed. It doesn't really look bad, but it also doesn't look good. Each episode ends with a more detailed illustration, some of which are really fan-servicey and there are a few points where the art style changes, usually for fan-service purposes. Because having a bunch of female characters without at least trying to make them look sexy at some point would be against the law. That has to be the case, otherwise they'd just be making the art disjointed for no reason and no one would be that dumb. 

Sound:

The acting in this is pretty mediocre. They did get some good people. Miyano Mamoru stars as Wooser and he's quite skilled. However, in this the performances are all pretty stale. Probably because there's not any emotional depth and very little range required for the characters. The music is pretty generic stuff. It's fine but not anything special.

Ho-yay:

There really isn't any.

Final Thoughts:

Wooser no Sono Higurashi is pretty sub-par. It's humour falls pretty short. The characters are pretty dull and the art, acting and music range from mediocre to a bit below average. Feel free to try a few episodes if you're curios, they don't even last for five minutes each. So, you can pretty easily get a feel for whether or not you'd like it. As for myself, I'm giving it a 4/10. Next week I'll take a look at Code Geass, series one.

Story: N/A

Wooser no Sono Higurashi makes no attempt at any sort of coherent storyline. When you read that, you might suppose that this must therefore be some sort of slice-of-life sketch based show and might be compared to the likes of Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou or Lucky Star. However, the word 'sketch' is too kind for Wooser. The narrative flicks randomly between snippets of Wooser the rabbit-thing's various fantasies of robots and perving on under-age girls. Each clip leaves you wondering if there was something you missed, or if you were even meant to find it funny. I'd estimate that at least a quarter of ... the series is swallowed by repeated clips of an 8-bit Wooser walking on screen and saying "Yo" to the audience (yes, it's that exciting).

Art: 5

Wooser is animated in a CG style. The art is very simple and there's very little decoration (often the clips take place on a blank background). The animation in general is ok but the frame rate in many places is noticeably poor.

Sound: 6

There's not too much to complain about here. The opening and ending themes are pretty catchy. On the other hand, it has knocked down my respect for Miyano Mamoru, the voice of Wooser (who I loved as Okabe in Steins;Gate among other roles), by a few pegs as his silly voice drags throughout the series.

Character: 1

There is only one character that gets any sort of screen time, and that is Wooser who is frankly obnoxious and uninteresting. All he seems to care about is himself and the undergarments of his human flatmates, Rin and Ren. They, along with a host of other random characters including an owl and some sort of dark anti-Wooser, might as well be furniture. They are never properly introduced and have only brief amounts of inane dialogue throughout the series. You might argue that because these are only small unconnected skits that character development doesn't matter, but the skits just aren't interesting enough to pull this off.

Enjoyment: 1

Other than a few WTF moments and references to other anime, I didn't really find myself laughing at all throughout this series, or in fact feeling any emotion other than mild irritation. I would rather have spent the time I watched this watching paint dry.

Overall: 3

Maybe not the worst collection of shorts ever created, but it can't be that far off. If you think it might be 'so bad it's good', you'd be wrong. Sorry that this review has been such a downer, but Wooser no Sono Higurashi is definitely a series to avoid. Go watch Steins;Gate or something, I don't know. Go about your lives.

Wooser no sono higurashi is a very short episode anime which contains about 5 sketches, random non connected stories with grownup elements, so it is not a kids show!
For me it was a mixed bowl of somewhat good and bad/plain candy, mostly bad.
It seems to be a parody of various of animes(old classic mecha animes, magic girl series, Steins gate and various of others), anime elements and genres, and some of the sketches was good but mostly they were pure nonsense (Where some of it randomness were funny).

For me I used it as breaktime from studies :)

You really have to love Wooser ... or love hating him because he is the character that drives the show, and for me I love hating him for his arrogance, delusional, laziness, pervertness... Yeah is he somewhat Excalibur´s cousin from Soul Eater :P

Also the animation is something for itself, it is really a either hate or love one. :)

And the best was especially in the first half of the season was the drawing at the ending after the credits and riddle XD

Who are these people? I don't know. What's a Wooser? Nobody knows. Why is the English title called "Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life" when Wooser has no mouth and therefore can't contract Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease? Absolutely no clue. How did I find this anime? Because it was a character in Miss Monochrome. That's the only thing I know.

Animation-wise, it's not the best in my opinion, but it looks cute and it works well enough. Plus, it's quite unique, which I respect. I enjoy the opening theme with its 8-bit instruments, however I don't enjoy the ending theme, as it looks pretty ugly and the song ... is bland. The four-minute episodes are divided into the opening theme (30 seconds), three sketches between thirty and fourty seconds long, two fifteen-second interludes, the ending theme (45 seconds long), and a 15-second outro. (Wait... I'm missing thirty seconds.) It's supposed to be a comedy, but I don't really find much funny. In fact, I find it quite boring. Wooser's dreams to become supreme leader or something like that is quite tripe, and sometimes he's a bit of a jerk. There are also sketches where people just talk and not much happens. For example, there's a sketch in episode 2 where one talks about Black Rock Shooter and the other one isn't listening to her complaining about how much her legs hurt from climbing the stairs. It doesn't seem funny to me. But I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm too old for this anime, though, and the kids would find this funny.

Wait, is this really for kids? Is it really rated G? There's kinda some not-so-kid stuff in here. Swearing, bloody deaths, Wooser's desire to eat girls' legs? (would you call that Crurophilia (leg fetish)?), the fanservice in episode 6, a couple pictures in the last five seconds of each episode that are kinda lewd. Is this really for kids?

The episode titles also don't make much sense. There was no alcohol in episode 2, so why would they put that in the name?

In the outro of each episode, Wooser tells us to go to the Wooser.tv site for a riddle. I went to the site, and I couldn't find a riddle (if you find it, then let me know).

I would not recommend this to kids. Honestly, I don't really recommend it to anyone. The only thing it has going for it is that it's marginally better than other thirty-second sketches I've seen, particularly HoloGraffiti and Girigiri Warukunai Watame. Still, it's not really good.