To be fair, there's nothing offensively wrong or bad about Joshikausei. It's more the lack of much at all that I take issue with.
I'd say my biggest gripe about the anime is that it is supposedly centered almost entirely around the premise of being a "silent" (i.e. no dialogue) anime. Despite this singular feature being the show's only significant defining characteristic, it doesn't really hold true to the concept. Much of the intent of the characters and surrounding situations relies on words and sentences written out visually, merely acting as pseudo-speech as opposed to a proper substitute for the words just being spoken. The occasional little speech/thought bubbles depicting what would otherwise be spoken are a much more effective execution of this idea, however typically a mix of the two methods are used. My other primary issue with this setup is that many times characters' mouths will still move as if they are audibly speaking... despite the VAs only making an "Ah" or "Ooh" sound. It almost feels like a bad dub at times due to this.
I'm really not sure why the studio decided to halfheartedly approach this idea, when in doing so it nearly defeats its entire purpose.
In regards to the other aspects of the show, as said previously there's nothing too great nor too terrible.
The soundtrack is overall fine and fitting, with the ED (or OP, as listed in MAL for some technical reason) standing out a decent bit. The voice actors themselves were fine, however the need to "speak" only in sounds can make the high school characters feel a bit infantile instead of cutesy.
The art and tone is adorable at points, however the animation is subpar more often than not. Certain scenes nearly delve into ecchi territory, but never commit and practically stay within a PG rating. There were some odd ー what I could only call ー continuity errors where the movement or positioning of the characters and objects did not flow from previous scenes. Also, there's a weirdly dark (in comparison) and emotional origin episode that completely doesn't fit in with the rest of the series. It was kinda jarring, but made me giggle because of the sudden change (and then everyone clapped).
Somehow, even though it's already a very short runtime, it still felt like each scene dragged on. It almost seems as though the episodes would benefit more from a 2 minute runtime rather than the 3.5 it settled on. That said, it still basically takes longer to read this whole review than watch the entirety of the show.
Joshikausei didn't really need a review this in-depth, because it really is just an anime that exists without doing much more. It's short enough that it can be worth a watch to get some nice reaction images, probably.
