~{Story}~
The story revolves around Karasuma Chitose, a newbie in the seiyuu industry who dreams of making it big. With a narcissistic attitude and glowing with overconfidence, she manages to get her first main role in an anime. This point on, the story focuses on Chitose and her colleagues and how they get through the anime project while improving themselves. Slice of Life anime normally don’t end up being story-heavy and Gi(a)rlish Number is no exception. The story isn’t its selling point as rather it’s the commentary and characters. However, the story works well as a backbone for its characters and the situations the characters go through is amusing at times. The series has an arc-like structure to it, as it focuses on different situations at a time. The series goes from focusing on Chitose lack of proper voice-acting abilities to Kazuha and Momoka’s family issues. As the series continues, it widens up its scope and starts focusing on Chitose’s surroundings rather than Chitose herself. Despite the fact that the light novels are still continues, the way the anime ends off doesn’t feel incomplete. Even if Gi(a)rlish Number never gets a second season, this season itself is satisfying enough to be its own standalone.
Story: 7/10
~{Presentation}~
What Gi(a)rlish Number excels in is not its story, but rather its characters, and most importantly, its commentary to Japan’s entertainment industry. The series is full of jabs to the anime industry, the light novel industry, the idol industry and the seiyuu industry. Gi(a)rlish Number shows what Watari Wataru excels at the most, cynical writing that doesn’t hold itself back. Many of the writing showcases the harsher aspects of the anime industry, even though some of it is a bit nitpicky. As supposed to Shirobako that showed the anime industry and a hard, but fun place, and Sore ga Seiyuu that showed voice acting in a positive manner, Gi(a)rlish Number contrasts those tones with its narcissistic characters and their negative opinion towards those industries. However, just like OreGairu, during its second half it changes tone. The series slows down with is cynicism and focuses more on its characters and their growth. And this is when Gi(a)rlish Number ends up being a character-driven anime. Without moment like this, the only thing the series would’ve had was its cynicism. The pacing gives time for the characters to get fleshed out. However, there are times when the pacing can get a bit slow. Overall, Gi(a)rlish Number’s style and execution is something that is rarely seen in anime, and it makes the series feel much more unique.
Presentation: 8.5/10
~{Character}~
As a character-driven anime, it is necessary to have likable and relatable characters. Does Gi(a)rlish Number succeed in doing so? Not at all, since it wasn’t aiming for such a goal anyways. But do the characters still end up being great? Definitely! Most of the cast of characters are a bunch of careless narcissists and that are filled with self-confidence, particularly the series protagonist, Chitose. Chitose is exactly as what was mentioned previously, yet she manages to be a very interesting protagonist. Just seeing her being so full of herself manages to be satisfying because it rare to see a protagonist like Chitose. However, she ends up being more complex than she seems because she tries to improve and near the end of the series, she goes through a lot of necessary character development. But Gi(a)rlish Number isn’t just about Chitose but also about her surroundings. Chitose’s colleagues, Kazuha and Momoka are both characters that contrast each other. Momoka is still a teenager, but she has a lot of freedom due to her parents being busy and them trusting her decisions. Kazuha on the other hand is in her late twenties, yet due to her overprotected parents, she lacks freedom. There’s proper contrasting between these two characters and shows how age never represents one’s responsibility in society. Chitose’s other two colleagues, Yae and Koto are also both quite likable, but they don’t get as much character development as the other character do. However, due to these character’s characterization, development isn’t necessary. There’s also a bunch of other supporting characters that makes the series more enjoyable. Chitose’s brother, Gojou, has an entertaining dynamic with her sister that creates a lot of enjoyable and hilarious bantering between the two. The producer of the anime project the characters work on, Kuzu (coincidently he has that name), is a completely lazy and pathetic person, yet he’s immensely hilarious. His assistant, Towada, is used as a nice contrast for Kuzu. And there are many other characters that make Gi(a)rlish Number’s cast pessimistically cynical, yet immensely enjoyable.
Character: 9/10
~{Art}~,
Diomedia is a mixed bag when it comes to their art quality and content. Mayoiga was a decent looking series (minus the CGI), but Handa-kun lacked proper detailing and the backgrounds were empty. Luckily Gi(a)rlish Number’s art is really pretty and, for the most part, consistent. QP:flapper’s character designs made for the light novels is well presented in the anime. There’s no doubt that the characters in Gi(a)rlish Number are good-looking and attractive, which makes it seem like as if it’s a “cute-girls-doing-cute-things” type of anime. However, these character designs contrasts with their characterization. But it’s not just the character designs that looks pretty, but the backgrounds too. They’re not the most detailed, but due to the color palette of this series being very vivid, the backgrounds end up looking very pretty. Also, the series tends to blur out its backgrounds or the sides to make the art have some sort of photographic feel to it. In photography, these are known as bokeh or Gaussian blurs, and they manage to make the art look stylish and modern.
Art: 8/10
~{Animation}~
Just like it’s art quality, Diomedea’s isn’t known to be consistent with their animation quality. However, Gi(a)rlish Number’s animation quality is very good for most of the time. The fluidity in the character motion is really good, and some slight additional animations are given to characters, such as wrinkles in clothes or hair movement. However, these detailed animations aren’t anything too special. There are moments when the fluidity in the character movements drop, but they’re nothing too bad. The backgrounds aren’t too static and has some animations to it. One pretty impressive thing is that vehicular moments aren’t CGI and are well animated. The series uses a lot of still shots which is primarily used so the studio has less animating to do. These aren’t too bad as they don’t tend to be distracting, and they’re never used when characters are speaking.
Animation: 7.5/10
~{Voice Acting}~
For an anime about voice acting, it would be pretty embarrassing if the voice acting quality of this series wasn’t good. Luckily that’s not the case. Senbongi Sayaka (who’s starting to get more main roles for anime… what a coincidence) voices Chitose and she does an excellent job with her character. She gets her narcissistic character right. There are moments when Chitose’s character poorly voice acts in an anime project, and her seiyuu manages to make the voice acting sound as cringeworthy as possible successfully. Oonishi Saori does a great job at portraying the level-headed Kazuha and gives her character a mature voice. She also does her character’s Yamagata dialect well. Momoka is voiced by Suzuki Eri and she does a very good job with her character, despite being a relatively new seiyuu. Koto’s voiced by Ishikawa Yui, who is best known for her role as Mikasa from Shingeki no Kyojin. She does a good job as her character and she does her Kansai dialect really well. Hondo Kaede voiced Yae really well and her voice matches her characters. But the most impressive voice acting comes from the supporting characters. Gojou’s seiyuu, Umehara Yuuichirou, does a very good job with his character and his mature voice plays well with his character. Kuzu’s seiyuu, Nakai Kazuya, is one of my favorite, and he does a splendid job in making his character as irritating as possible, while making the character hilarious. Eguchi Takuya, who’s also one of my favorite, does a good job as Towada. Interesting fact: Matsuoka Yoshitsugu plays as a character called Matsuoka Yoshitsugu in Gi(a)rlish Number.
Voice Acting: 9/10
~{Music}~
The music in Gi(a)rlish Number is also quite good. Both the OP and ED is sung by the main cast, Senbongi Sayaka, Ishikawa Yui, Hondo Kaede, Oonishi Saori, and Suzuki Eri. The OP, “Bloom”, is really good, an it contrasts well with the actual tone of the series. The ED, “Ima wa Mijikashi Yume Miyo Otome” is retty catchy, though it starts and ends off with unmeaningful (but catchy) lyrics. The group also sings two insert songs in the series and they’re both decent. Unfortunately, there’s not much variety in the background music, but what’s there is good. The music that is played whenever things are in an upbeat mood, or if Kuzu is spurring out bullshit, is pretty good and I like how the tempo changes depending on the current mood. For example, when Kuzu has a discussion with other executives, when his ideas get rejected, the tempo slows down. When he comes up with another idea, the tempo goes back to normal.
Music: 6.5/10
~{Enjoyment}~
Gi(a)rlish Number was a blast to watch from start to finish. The pacing might be slow, but the character interactions and their take on the entertainment industry was always fun to watch. Gi(a)rlish Number proves that you don’t need likable characters to have good characters. As long as they’re interesting to watch, it doesn’t matter if they’re a scumbag of a character or not. The character development in the series is adequate and the contrasting between some of the characters are well done. I’m a sucker for cynical stuff (hence why both OreGairu and Hikigaya are in my favorites), so anime like Gi(a)rlish Number immediately click with me faster than Killer Queen.
Enjoyment: 8.5/10
In the end, Gi(a)rlish Number is what I would come to expect from Watari Wataru. After the disappointment of Qualidea Code and the indefinite hiatus of OreGairu, Gi(a)rlish Number was a treat for both OreGairu fans, and those who’ve never seen Watari’s work before. With a good mix of both cynicism and character development, the series manages to know when to waste time taking jabs at the anime industry and when to actually give some depth to its characters. The interactions between the characters are hilarious due to many of the characters’ narcissistic and over-confident behavior. It’s a shame that a series like this is basically going unnoticed or people are skipping over it since the synopsis and key visuals don’t look particularly interesting. But if you haven’t watched Gi(a)rlish Number yet, it would be best to give it a try and see if it’s your type of anime.
+ The cynical and pessimistic comments towards Japanese entertainment and their industries are great.
+ Great characters that contrast each other and have adequate character development.
+ Genuinely hilarious that doesn’t rely on slapstick, with entertaining bantering between characters.
+ The voice acting done by the seiyuu is reall good, especially for the supporting characters.
- Not much variety in the background music.
- Pacing can get a bit slow at times.
Overall: 8.0/10
