Tonari no Seki-kun

Creativity, a simple word that inspires so much innovative ideas from anyone, anywhere, anytime. What inspires creativity varies but for a young boy named Toshinari Seki, he takes it to astronomical levels that goes far beyond what you may be used to seeing at school. As a master of killing time, Seki lives up his reputation of such a title. For a 7-minute anime series, there’s so much attention Seki can attract towards its audience.

When it comes to killing time, you would do something inventive, something creative, or anything that will prevent you from saying along the lines of ‘it’s so boring, there’s nothing ... to do’. For Seki, there’s a chance for that in his class every single day because he sits in the very back corner. As a kid of his age, Seki can be described as a simple yet curious character. He isn’t very interested in his studies by the way he behaves in class. Looking it from an intrinsic perspective, Seki is an average boy with nothing that stands out with his character or personality. Rather, he prefers to be alone by his activities. Of course, that’s perfectly normal because kids his age are growing up and build their characters. Seki is also more of the shy boy with his lack of dialogues. More often or not, he communicates using body language (gestures, signals, etc) that somehow makes its point. Rather than being intellectual, this series takes Seki and presents him as a bizarre yet likable character with his actions.

Then, we have Rumi Yokoi, the not-so-fortunate girl sitting next to Seki. Similar to Seki, she is the typical average girl without the glorifying looks or an abnormal personality. Yet, she is similar in some ways to Seki as characterized by her curiosity. Despite trying to ignore Seki’s actions in class, she often finds herself unable to but instead entranced by his activities. It’s humorous in many ways because almost everything that Seki does tends to draw her attention. At the same time, Yokoi often gets into trouble by the teacher and mistakenly being labeled as a troublemaker. For Yokoi, it becomes a chore for her every class period to deal with Seki. On some instances, she seems to tolerate or even embrace Seki’s culture. Other times, she overestimates Seki’s intentions that results into a scolding by the adults. There’s a lot of anxiety each episode seeing Yokoi and her reactions towards how she perceives Seki in class. Furthermore, it’s surprisingly noticeable to see her character develop. This is evidenced as Yokoi seemingly grows stronger with every class period or episode. She is able to resist some her curiosity or even close to stopping Seki from goofing off in class. Unfortunately, she never seems to reach home base with her goals because time is simply not her side.

The series adapts itself in an episodic format. Given its average 7-8 minute standard, viewers should not expect an engaging linear story saturated with complexity. Instead, do expect a slice of life story featuring Seki as he kills time in his boring class. What you might not expect is the activities he does in class when the teacher is not looking. Some of them might seem typical while others are not. Examples including bring live animals, performing experiments, and in general any activities that would earn you a trip to the principal’s office if caught. The humorous part is that Seki NEVER gets caught. Throughout the series, it is Yokoi that becomes the collateral damage because of Seki’s innovations. Not only that but no one believes a word she says. It aims at the purpose to appeal to the audience that the adults of this show are useless and self-insufficient. If every student could get away with Seki’s behavior, then nothing would ever be learned. But as an experimental show, Seki’s activities encourages creativity and even inspiration. It’s clear that the boy is intelligent because some of the games he engages in are fundamentally impossible, at least in realistic levels such as mixing chess and shogi on the same board. For Yokoi, she often formulates imaginations and delusions at her own discretions from the way Seki kills time.

As a show of weird quirks, there are occasionally some characters that comes into the scenes to bring a little normalcy. I don’t classify them as supporting characters since most of them tend to enter and exit after the period/episode is over. Yet, there is one other character that is worth noting. Her name is Goto and like most girls her age is interested in relationships rather than her education. Make no mistake, her delusions can be as zany as Yokoi in class. Rather than being curious at Seki’s ingenious games, she is more interested in their “relationship”. This is in quotation marks because Seki and Yokoi are not dating. Yet, there are people that thinks they are dating for bizarre reasons. Further evidenced are some hints that Yokoi might see Seki as more than just a classmate. However, the show focuses more on its comedy and less so on a Romeo & Juliet story.

Of all the silliness that the show brings in, it’s all presented as simplistic. It’s not realistic with some of Yokoi’s games that seems unconventional. Yet, they are practical and influences Yokoi’s school life at various levels. The story itself is rather too simple and may seems repetitive. Yokoi getting accused of being a troublemaker in class can also seem bizarre considering girls are often the ones that are more peaceful. Not only that but she doesn’t understand Seki’s purpose which is also a bit of an overstatement. We might never understand Seki’s purpose beyond the simple idea of ‘killing time’. The lack of character backgrounds such as their childhoods being explored also becomes a drawback. Finally, the humor of this show might not appeal to everyone. In essence, it’s a comedy show that inspires laughter but not everyone may get used to Seki’s quirky activities in class.

Both artwork and soundtrack are consistent with this short series. In essence, they are simple and down to earth. The classroom backgrounds is straight point forward with nothing particular that stands out. It’s probably best to just call it ‘just there’ because Seki’s activities are what draws in the audience and his classmate. The character designs also seems normal except maybe some slightly physical aspects for Yokoi. In retrospect, we don’t see a girl with white hair often in class that goes unnoticed. On the other hand, the soundtrack is very noticeable for both its OP and ED songs with slightly edited changes throughout the show. Instrumentally, it has a melodious tone with comical backgrounds. We see both main characters in the songs as they demonstrate degrees of humor. The ED song features Seki playing an instrument to create the style that Tonari-Seki Kun accomplishes – innovational humor. Kana Hanazawa plays the role of Yokoi with her nervous yet curious voice mannerisms. It matches well since she is specialized in voicing girls of shy characters. On the other hand, Seki’s voice is hardly ever heard throughout the series. His body language does the talking.

7 minutes. That’s all it takes to draw in as much as attention for Seki towards an audience. There’s no need for a deep engaging story because shows like this should be presented with simplicity. While the activities that Seki performs can be complex, it’s easy to see what the show tries to accomplish. And that goal was achieved by bringing in humor in a different way that what you may be used to. No absurd fan service. No shock values. No crude humor. Rather, it’s a show that breaks down the barriers of a normal school life. Now, that’s a certain kind of fun.

Tonari no Seki-Kun is a simple show with simple stories. That's one of the things I really like about it, because it's easy to digest. The short length works great, and no single episode feels like it's overstaying it's welcome.
However, the whole thing also feels pretty formulaic, which eventually started to wear on me. Even only watching at a relatively average pace (at one episode every morning), I began to get bored of it about halfway through. Some episodes were pretty funny, but I can't recall many times the show actually made me laugh out loud. A few episodes also recycled ideas from earlier episodes, ... and just put a slight twist on them, which I thought seemed kind of lazy from a writing perspective.

The art is pretty standard, and definitely common to what we normally see in the genre. It's well done, but it's nothing too impressive. I do think the character design is slightly better than what we typically see with this kind of art style, though.

The voice acting is pretty standard as well, but it's well done for what it is. All of the actors represent their characters well, but again, nothing too remarkable here. I think where the show's audio really shines is with the opening and ending themes. They are super fun, catchy, and they fit perfectly with the setting of the show.

The characters also go along with that sense of fun. The main characters Yokoi & Seki-kun are somewhat interesting. Seki-kun is a pretty standard looking character, visually, but they do enough to make him unique. They never have him say any words, just grunts and groans, however I like this because it lets his personality be shown entirely through his actions. Yokoi, on the other hand describes what Seki-Kun is doing, essentially narrating things for us. She has an excitable personality, and really pulls a lot of the fun of the show together. There are a few other supporting characters, which feel very generic, but fill a gap well enough, and flesh out the cast just a tiny bit.

Overall, Tonari no Seki-Kun is a somewhat average, but enjoyable show. What it ends up being isn't anything special, but it also doesn't really try to be. This is both good and bad, as it's a good quick bit of fun, but over the course of watching it, I slowly began to lose interest. The writing is good, but perhaps a bit weak, however, the characters tend to make up for that somewhat, with their somewhat unique identities. I'd recommend it to anybody who enjoys the comedy genre and isn't expecting anything all that incredible... but just looking for a fun, simple show.

Take up a subject matter for writing a story, think up 5 creative thoughts within the subject matter, now string them together and place them contiguously. Can you get an interesting plot worth your time? If yes, you'll like tonari no seki kun. If no, you're the audience that's the target of my review.

While the abovementioned is not a perfect analogous comparison, it's to give you an idea of what I'm about to say. Tonari no seki kun is flawed in that it does exactly what its synopsis claims it does and does it religiously. The 'setups' that seki-kun conjures up, mostly on his ... desk, may be creative but they don't make the show entertaining on their own. If the 'setups' themselves were enough you wouldn't need named, faced characters in the story. Infact, some floating marionettist's hands would suffice for enacting the setups, kind of like how they're shown in reenactments of fairytales of the worlds in visual fantasy media through puppet shows or paper puppet theatres.

The creative aspects of this show aren't properly enmeshed into a plot equally creative and great. Any creative element is a part of a whole with interesting characters, plots, and situations through which you live vicariously while feeling different things, being different people, and achieving some goals or reactions vis-a-vis other actors ( directly or indirectly through working upon a situation or plot in which you and the other actors all act). The subjects of stories are sentinent actors.

Tonari no seki kun's characters are barely endearing, and the entire episode focuses on the setup, which is again the case for every episode in the show. There isn't a lot happening in the outside world resulting from the setups that would also make the show as a whole endearing. The reactions of the FMC are not entertaining, the situations borne out of the main male character's antics won't give you a rush of dopamine, and the personal chemistry between the characters is nothing to write about. You don't feel a fantasy of competence, you don't see anything that makes you fall off your chair laughing, there's nothing to amuse you and hold your attention in any substantial way, you don't see SoL moments that evoke intense emotions, and most importantly you can't describe this show as memorable, a fatal flaw for its kind of show.

The charm of this dull show, for the little it's worth, lies in the fact that it might trick you into thinking its spectacle of creativity of 'setups' means the show as a whole is just as 'creative', with all the positive connotations of this word that make it a sought after quality in a show ofc.