Hoo boy, this review might be a little controversial with some of my MAL friends. We all know how subjective comedy is and how we all find different things funny. I heard glowing reviews about this anime, but the jokes just really weren't working for me.
Humor Style:
Do you have young kids in your family? Have you ever watched Teen Titans Go? Asobi Asobase uses a very similar approach to its humor and episodes, only in my opinion its slightly less funny. For example, characters will constantly make stupid faces and that's the joke. Characters will reference popular things, and that's the entire joke. There's an episode devoted to bad online yaoi fanfics and that's probably the best episode. The rich girl's butler is probably the best character just from his line delivery. His character's quirk is that alien's gave him an anal probe and now he fires lasers out of his ass. That's the level of intellectual humor we're working with. Another episode involves the girls getting into a contest to smell each other's armpits. The foreign girl wins because East Asians have less apocrine sweat glands and produce less body odor. You see kids, that's because East Asians usually have the AA allele of the ABCC11 gene that produces apocrine sweatglands. The AA allele is a mutation that makes the gene non-fuctional, so not as many apocrine sweat glands form. Most humans have the GA or GG alleles, so they produce more body odor. Those alleles were selected for in most of the world because body odor acts as an aphrodisiac for primates like us. Scientists believe the smelly alleles were not selected for in East Asians and Native Americans likely due to the cold climate of 20,000-10,000 years ago nullifying the advantage of smelling bad. The whole joke is that the episode is wasting your time teaching you about something you probably don't care about. It's the mortgage and real estate episode of Teen Titans Go!!! Same joke, same technique.
Characters:
There are 3 main girls that make up the pastime club. The first is Hanako, who is rich and stupid. That's her character. The second is Kasumi, who is a geek girl that dislikes games because her older sister always beat her at games. The final girl is Olivia, who was born in Japan to American parents. She pretends to speak English and acts like she can't speak Japanese, but she actually can only speak Japanese. That's the ENTIRE joke with her character. Every episode basically just uses variations of that joke.
Plot:
It's a show about nothing happening except 3 shallow characters hang out and do dumb gags. Occasionally they troll the audience and waste our time. Once again, kind of reminds me of this other cartoon I know.
Animation:
Studio Lerch used all their budget on Assassination Classroom, so this was made with whatever spare change they had left over.
Overall:
If you thought this show was hilarious, that's totally cool. I have shit taste in comedy and I'm in no position to cast judgment on anyone. I recently watched an anime called "Miss Bernard Said", which as of this review is rated at 6.02 here on MAL. Everyone here on MAL hates that series and thinks it's less funny than a brain tumor. I personally thought Miss Bernard was utterly hilarious. It's a simple show about a girl named Sawako who wants to impress people with how intelligent and cultured she is, but she's too lazy to actually read novels or watch art films. She just constantly brags about stuff she didn't actually read and is a pseudo-intellectual snob. I found it funny because I used to be a Sawako in Middle School. I think most people at some point have gone through a Sawako phase and that familiarity makes it funny. At least to me. If you're in the mood for a particular brand of VERY goofy humor, I can see why this show would be appealing. Personally though, I can't really recommend it easily.
