Tonari no Seki-kun

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.