Nana Maru San Batsu

Nana Maru San Batsu or Fastest Finger First is an cliche anime similar to many school-based, guy joins a club'esque type of anime. It's about quiz bowl which is basically a competitive Jeopardy, with the main focus of answering the questions quickly and correctly.

Initially, I was expecting like an average 6 rated show, archetype characters, cliche story and so forth. Well, it turned out to be a lot worse.

Story (3). Basically, a nerd joins junior high, during the club ceremonies he is picked to join the "Quiz Bowl" team for a display game. "Now even though he is new to the game, he is extremely ... talented and smart because of his lack of friends, he spent all his time in the library". Also playing with him is his love interest which is passionate to the game, so you can guess who convinced him to join. The rest of the story can be guessed as any competitive club focused story.

Art (7). The art is well done, I only put a 7 since Toei Animation has a thing where they will drop the quality overtime. But for the first 4 episodes, it's consistent so no problems there.

Sound (5). The OST is barely heard throughout the episodes, which isn't bad but it could have improved the general tone and feeling. OP and ED are good enough, however I'm not counting them towards the score. The voice acting is decent enough, so no major complaints, but there are moments when there is lack of passion.

Characters (4). Every single character can be described in 2 sentences or less. They all can be put into a certain sub-group of a major archetype except the minor characters, in which case they don't have more than 1 emotion. Basically, its 1 or 2 levels above the average harem series, but still down there.

Enjoyment (1). One of my mains points for a non-action oriented show is dialogue, which is complete trash. Characters describing things in the least original way possible. "cough" Toei style "cough". In later episodes, there is a ton repetition, same thing is said within 2 minutes of each other, then repeated every time something similar is mentioned. If Toei could fix that, then this show would have entered at least a 6 on my scale.

Overall (3).
Story: Cliche
Art: Good
Sound: Not noticeable
Characters: Basic
Enjoyment: Dialogue completely destroyed it for me.

Fastest finger first is over.
Finally, it was pretty bad.
The concept at the beginning was cool.
I don't know much about quiz bowl or even heard of the subject of it.
Which is the premise of the show by the way.
And I was semi excited to learn more about it through this anime.
And from the anime's view on quiz bowl presented to me.
It wasn't very exiting.
It was about these trivia super geniuses that can answer a question without hearing the entire answer through various techniques.
And apparently that is realistic to the actual thing.
... I think that's what ruined it for me.
I couldn't project anyone onto any of the characters in the series.
Also, the characters are very stereotypical and bland.
Even the voice actors got bored or at least weren't casted well.
So Fastest Finger First, I give it a 3 being generous.
Just not a very appealing anime to watch.
I wouldn't recommend to anyone.
This has been ur spoiler not spoiler review on Fastest Finger First

Look, it doesn't really matter how amazing of a show you have if you start off with the most horrendous openings known to man. I can't actually believe a mangaka storyboarded this manga, got it approved by an editor, serialized it, kept it going enough for it to get an anime adaption proposal, and it actually getting adapted. It's crazy. This start is just that bad.
When you have a show be about a shy MC joining a quiz bowl club, how would you expect the first episode to go? Oh, how about looking at a hot girl's panties and getting convinced by that very girl ... to join the club? Haha thats so cute, funny and relatable, guys!
Look, I get it when an anime focused around romance/ecchi has a lot of ecchi scenes, but this is basically the last place where I'd expect that to be a main plot point. The author was probably thinking "well, I can't think of a hook to pull the reader into the story and can't think of a way to naturally transition the MC into the quiz bowl club. How about going with this? Everyone will naturally love it." It's such a lazy beginning. It really is.
It's at that point where I promptly stopped watching, as there is no way there was any way for the show to be half decent when they start the first 10 minutes of the show like that.

Starter for 10 was a film i think i saw a few years back but memories fade and by the rate mine are fading I will be in an assisted care home by 2021. But that film is about quizzes, more importantly the true king of the "Sort of after The One Show" slot for the BBC, University Challenge. I've always complained how I don't think its fair that most team members are mature students who really take the title to its extremes. They roam these isles, bouncing from Anthropology of Dragon Dicks post graduate courses to Four Dimensional Town Planning at the University of ... South Wales, with cackled laughter piercing from their bet sit. They are the true journeymen and women of a televised Oxbridge college circle jerk where you get a dressing down by an aged broadcast journalist.

Fastest Finger First takes this and puts it in a Japanese high school and tries to use a medium which relies on motion picture to rely the importance of pressing a button quite quickly. They answer questions, some of which are easy because you are born in the decadent west, and some you'll never get yourself, and then very few which are to pander to fan service and they have a boy to play the role of you.

We follow a squirrel looking kid with coke bottle glasses and a slight cows lick and he is nervous but reads things so he is better at quizzes than the general population, but he has a long way to go so there is room for progress and 60 manga chapters. He doesn't buzz in quick enough, and he has not rote learned the questions yet, because he has been doing this, as of episode 5, for about 4 and a half days. He has made a pretty boy rival, a few friends, and a slightly better understanding of quizzing. I'm sure he will win University Challenge by the end of the season, then stab Jeremy Paxman in the kidneys.

A lot has been said about the voice actor for the girl in your merry band of quiz-o-nauts, and from my limited knowledge of Japan, the actor sounds like a normal Japanese women speaking normally in a non-descript accent. You get used to it, because people naturally pick up emotional undertones in someone's voice after a while, even though there are very few coming through. It's just daunting because you come to expect that she will sound like a what a cat would sound like if had a firm ass and was serving you coffee.

To finalise, this show isn't a good show, but it has something that only quiz shows have: you can play along. You can sit there and see if you can get the question and answer from the three and a half syllables they use because the Japanese are the true super intelligent beings of east Asia and Kia can't make cars for shit. And when you do its fun, you feel a sense of pride that you can never get from watching cartoons your soul spirit is getting bullied in a real Japanese high school right now. The blonde hair dyed street thugs are continuing the tradition of sticking a lit firecracker up his rectum and making him do the Macarena and putting the footage on Weibo or whatever they use to publicly humiliate each other over there.

You can't play a long to Kill La Kill while watching, so this is objectively better. Like 12/19

All the cliches you hate, wrapped in subculture you probably know nothing about, that will do little to make you care further about that subculture.

Story (3/10): Shy Main Character gets wrapped up in the "Quiz Bowl" club. His backstory is that his mom was a librarian and he's spent a lot of time in libraries so he's awkward af. He then proceeds to like quiz bowl club and the friends he makes in quiz bowl club. He's also the potential to become Jesus-kun at quiz bowl, so it's got that going for it I guess. That's it. Nothing more than the boiler plate stew of ... mediocrity.

Art (4/10): Nothing special to see here. Nothing horrible either. It's not atrocious. It's functional. TBH now that I think about it, there's nothing about this show that necessitates the use of animation. I mean, you use animation when you need things to be surreal, or cute, or to exaggerate, or to do this visually unique or impossible to do otherwise. This show is about kids in high school hitting buzzers and answering questions. It's animated accordingly.

Sound (5/10): The opening and credits music are the best thing about this show, but they're nothing special. And the buzzer sounds... I like buzzer sounds I guess. After that, there's no great music, no environment sounds, the cast is functional. There's nothing bad here... nothing good either. The voice of romantic interest girl though sounds weird though. Not good or bad, but just very non-traditional, which isn't by itself a bad thing... it's just noticeable and every time she speaks, I notice that her voice is weird.

Character (2): Shy Main Character trope meets Romantic Interest Girl in the library on the first day of high school. Romantic Interest Girl falls over Shy Main Character and Shy Main Character sees her panties and develops a crush. This is the launch pad for the "Will they, won't they" dramatic and emotional friction that's supposed to carry us throughout the season. Romantic Interest Girl figures out Shy's smart so she tricks him (sort of) into joining the club cuz she's really obsessed with it, and it turns out he likes the club. So we got our leads. Throw in the loud dumb best friend trope, the Super-Senpai trope, a Loli+Bratty sister, and we got our cast. That's as deep as this puddle gets.

Enjoyment (3): If there's any enjoyment to be had here, it'd be from the actual quizzes. The competitions. The point of quiz bowl is the hear a question, buzz in as fast as possible, then get the right answer. So the real objective is to figure out the least amount of information you need from a question to guess what the question is going to ask, then answer the question. Interesting stuff! Except for the fun of this sport doesn't translate well when... translated. 90% of the reason people watch trivia shows like Jeopardy or game shows like Wheel of Fortune is so that you can play along. But with this, you can't play along, because you have to read the subtitles instead of listening alongside, and between Japanese sentence structures being different, and the fact that the sentences are being stopped midway through for the characters to answer, you don't get to appreciate the game at all. ... So I guess what you're left with is watching people react to people getting questions right or wrong... and if you can't enjoy the main premise of the quizzes the way you want to, then you gotta hang your hat on the characters, and like I said before, they're shallow at best.

Also, just as a sidenote, this show does a deep disservice to it's female characters by over-sexualizing them. Anime, in general, has this problem overall, but this series really bugged with how they did it. It's no Eromanga-sensei at all, but that's at least a genre and it's done for a specific effect. This show is just plain disrespectful with how lazy and so ready they are to just lump the girls into girlfriend roles or idols to drool over. Our introduction to the main female protagonist has her exposing her panties. The next episode has her explicitly show off her thighs in her skirt. The one time we a group of girls talking without men around, they're gaggled around talking about how cute boys are. The loli brat sister type just came into the plot and she's introduced as the potential girlfriend for Super-Senpai. It's annoying and it's lazy and it's predictable. I have no moral objections. I drool over women. Just, make it interesting if you're going there at all.

Overall (3/10): If you're an English speaking, subtitle reading anime fan like me, there's no enjoyment to watching the quizzes, which is the main draw for this show. There's no enjoyment to the characters, the art and production values do nothing the enhance or elevated the experience, and there's really no point for this show to exist in this form of media. Stay away from this pointless show.