Mar 12, 2020
"If you flip the 10, it becomes a 01!" -Some Jerk
Let me preface this pre-review by saying this, I am in love with this series, but for all the wrong reasons. Gakuen Handsome, or, Gakuen Handsome as the gringos say, is the sophomore effort of Team YokkyuFuman.
I imagine Team YokkyuFuman's frame of mind when conjuring up the idea for this was one of both pragmatism and...a cheeky disregard for creativity. Gakuen Handsome is one of the most creatively bankrupt series I have ever had the pleasure of watching. I am utterly convinced that Team YokkyuFuman wrote this as a cheeky retaliation/statement against the higher-ups and
...
no amount of rationalizing or fanboying can change that perception for me. Gakuen Handsome is terrible, it's like the Yaoi equivalent of The Room except it gets away with convincing people that it's good. The only thing Gakuen Handsome is good at is highlighting how by-the-numbers this style of series can get.
Briefly touching on the technicals of this series, the voice acting is god awful. Maeda's voice actor has one setting and one setting only, although that has been covered ad nauseam. He makes Junko Takeuchi's work as Naruto seem warm and inviting like Morgan Freeman. It is probably the only time watching a series that it actually elicited a physical reaction from me. Although, as a small caveat, if you attempt to watch this series from the perspective of someone knowing what they are signing up for, the subbed version adds an extra layer of grease to this disgustingly satisfying sandwich. I.e. if you want the genuine Gakuen Handsome experience, the voice acting is like icing on that cake.
The animation is in a middling ground of both extremes. It can be bad when it wants to and it can also skimp on its budget when it needs to. I have conflicting feelings on the animation though. Had the material been in more capable hands like Bones or Madhouse, I feel that it could've been leaning more towards "beautiful spectacle" territory as opposed to "beautifully terrible". So despite my compliments to the mediocre animation mostly serves to its benefit.
Now that the technicals are out of the way, I feel I shouldn't even have to harp all that much on the story and characters. If you've watched Junjou Romantica, if you've watched Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, if you have even a basic knowledge of writing propensities when it comes to yaoi and comedy, you've already gotten a taste of Gakuen Handsome. The story is bereft of shallow gimmicks and instead opts to stuff itself full of cliches and archetypes. The overarching storyline and subplots all have parallels to other works and the characters all have doppelgangers floating around in some other manga.
So why the 10? Honestly, I'm not even really sure myself. They say that there are certain series that require you to take a step back or a dumbed-down open mind to enjoy. I don't even really feel either of those things are required to watch and enjoy Gakuen Handsome. I've seen what it looks like when it earnestly feels like Team YokkyuFuman is trying, and they have a lot of genuinely good qualities to the way they draw and write this anime. In fact, I have no doubt that this series has the potential to grow into something greater than the sum of its parts considering that it hasn't been given the axe at this stage. Gakuen Handsome was not a labor of love or a passion project, that is apparent to me. From my perspective, Gakuen Handsome is a frustrated and rebellious statement on the current status of yaoi and the politics that goes into publication. Because honestly, it takes a real genius to write something this stupid. Or perhaps I'm just reading too much into it?
Whatever the case may be, Gakuen Handsome is my ultimate guilty pleasure and I wave that 10 with pride.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
