Story:
The story is a pretty simple initial setup. The basic gist of it is that Chiyo, a highschooler, has a crush on Nozaki. Through a various series of events, she ends up discovering Nozaki is actually creates a popular shoujo romance manga and ends up joining him and a few other helpers of his in creating his manga. Through this setup we meet a whole cast of colorful characters and interesting events.
Let me first cover the main and most important aspect of this show. The humor. It is simply brilliant, one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a loong time. It is incredibly smart, and switches between various types of humor flawlessly. At first I was a little offput by it’s reliance on ‘blush humor’ as I like to call it, in the first episode, but it quickly brushed away any concerns I had. You know those jokes that randomly pop into your head at the randomest times and make you chuckle and get you funny looks from the people around you? Yeah, this show is loaded with those. There would be jokes where I would be chuckling after the joke was over just thinking about it again. Not only that, but the humor is fast, too. There is almost no event in the show that isn’t used for a joke or gag of some kind, and each episode is loaded to the bursting point with humor, and there are plenty of parodies of common Shoujo manga and anime tropes, often displayed through the contrast between Nozaki’s manga and their lives. That said, I feel the massive amountof humor hurts the show a little.
A common flaw in comedies is that they lack substance, or fail to properly balance drama and humor. This show has literally no real drama of any kind, and the character’s relationships were very under-developed due to the lack of jokeless moments that are used to develop the characters and their personalities. Though this show is hilarious, I wouldn’t have minded just a little less humor in order to give the show more depth. While the final episode focused more on being heartwarming and pleasant, even then it failed to make a satisfactory commitment despite still managing to be a really enjoyable finale to the series.
Characters:
For the majority these characters were handled very well, their interactions with each other are extremely enjoyable to watch, and most of the cast has really good comedic chemistry. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of these characters don’t have much development due to the near-explicit focus on humor, but they are still very fun to watch.
Chiyo is our main source of grounding in the show, and is for the most part the main character. A lot of the show is focused on things from her point of view, though it does switch it around a little. Her inner monologue and quick and varied display of emotions and reactions brings a lot of the humor, and she was definitely one of my favorites in the show. She was a solid character that really made you root for her.
Nozaki is one of the more distant people in the show. He gets plenty of screentime, but his character is still pretty unpredictable and it’s hard to get an idea of his thought process. As the show goes on, we do get a bit more of idea of what he’s like, and it is very fun to see his almost child-like way of going about things, especially considering his manly and mysterious demeanor.
Mikoshiba is a character that feels rather like a third wheel within the show. He’s the only character without a true pairing or compliment to him, and isn’t incredibly memorable either. He’s fun to watch for certain, but feels rather undeveloped and uncharacterized especially in a show where that’s already a problem.
I’m pairing Masayuki and Kashima in this bit because it’s hard to talk about them separately. These characters are incredibly funny. This show really knows how to do proper slapstick, and Masayuki’s reactions to Kashima’s actions are hilarious. Their moments together are some of the funniest in the entirety of the show. Seperately, Masayuki is a good character, and like Chiyo is very solid and pretty grounding. Kashima on the other hand is a lot less well-defined, and a lot of her actions are either based around her popularity with girls, or her obsession with Masayuki.
Now I have to mention Seo and Wakamatsu. Personally I found these characters to be my least favorite in the show out of the mains. They weren’t quite as funny as the other characters, and much like Mikoshiba were rather undefined and lacking in depth. And rather strangely considering their differences, to me at least they felt a lot like a poorer version of the same contrast between Masayuki and Kashima.
Along with that there is the somewhat small cast of side characters, with some being a good source of humor like Maeno and Ken-san, and then there’s Yukari, who was so forgettable I legitimately forgot she existed.
Animation:
The animation is about average considering today’s standards. It isn’t completely smooth, and there are some uses of common cheaper tactics used in animation. Even the look itself isn’t very unique or special. However, it succeeded in having a pleasant look to it, as well as having some very nice looking backgrounds. The animation on the character expressions, overlays, and insane reactions all contributed beautifully to the humor, and the show likely wouldn’t be near as funny without it, along with this, the Character Designs look phenomenal. Though it certainly could’ve been better, I think for what it did it did it well.
Sound:
Overall pretty solid, as far as sound goes. The Voice Acting was perfectly fine as far as I can tell, and the voices for most of them felt spot on. The music as well I found to be really good. Generally I don’t remember the soundtrack to a show, especially Comedies considering how much the humor distracts you from the music, but I noticed this show had a really good OST that pleasantly contributed to the mood of the show, changing pace and tone to fit the varying situations. The Opening for this show is my favorite of the season, and just a great song in general. Incredibly solid and well done.
Final Thoughts:
For all it’s downsides when it comes to character development, there is one main factor when it comes to making a comedy. And that is being funny. Does this show succeed? Heck yes! The humor is incredibly well-paced, memorable, and hilarious. It also manages to cover a broad range of comedic styles, and there is never a dull moment. Even further, due to the quick yet brilliant pacing of the show, it has an incredibly high rewatchability level. This show is packed with gif-able material, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it retain a fair amount of popularity and possibly gain further seasons. Even the ending, though not being quite as satisfactory as it could’ve been, still was enjoyable and went out on a pretty positive note.
(Originally Written September 22nd, 2014)
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