Do It Yourself!! follows the same basic formula, but a DIY club that focuses on building handicrafts and various small and large projects—including constructing a tree house—and building everything from scratch is at least a bit more novel as a starting concept, and there's limitless potential for ideas. Sure, for some it might produce a snicker when they think of the meme where the female construction worker holds a sandwich blueprint, but this series occupies a not-so-distant future where sandwich-making might be described as an esoteric craft, and everything we eat is lab-grown slop served out of boxes flown in by drones... which is, frankly, the present reality, just subtract drones from the equation, for now. Additionally, newer generations possess fewer skills; other than, say, tech-oriented ones, and that's to a much smaller degree than is usually implied, so woodworking or anything useful is usually out of the question. Most jobs are service-oriented or some kind of file-pushing tedium, in stark contrast to working with your hands like the girls do here.
This is one of those rare CGDCT series that isn't content to just mine silliness out of the basic activities and character dynamics, instead going a step further by grounding its themes in current/developing/future events—namely, the fourth industrial revolution, which entails the merging of the physical, digital, and biological realms. In short, this implies an eventual convergence toward smart cities with integration of most everything via internet of things and internet of bodies and maximum surveillance. This is demonstrated in the series pretty regularly in the higher tech areas: Pudding's house has sensors that automatically open the door for her and most everything is automated inside, a similar setup at her school, the ninja girl having to disable the surveillance systems to sneak out of her classroom, drones flying around everywhere, etc. Technology encircles the characters. Its omnipresence is made manifest by drones flying overhead in virtually every episode. Each character interacts with technology to varying degrees, but much of the time these developments remain out of frame, occasionally glimpsed at more directly, yet they are primarily backdrops to provide contrast, and the series maintains the free-flowing nature that draws so many people to the genre.
By injecting a light amount of thematic weight, the characters' excursions become more meaningful and rooted than they otherwise would be. I've seen various attempts to pin some sort of subtext around the CGDCT genre, such as it representing a kind of conservative utopianism where everything is peachy enough that there are no real problems to speak of, and it's the kind of escapism that many yearn for because it contrasts so starkly with our own reality. Perhaps DIY!! has a touch of this, but it's content to leave one foot firmly in our own world, if only just a tiptoe.
The priority of the series is never placed upon the possibilities that the increasingly technological future entails. Sometimes questions will be presented directly or implied on rare occasion. There's of course the clash between technology and "outdated" activities, and an engagement with the latter suggests a kind of dissatisfaction with the former (or that the former may be going too far, too fast)—or at least that there is inherent worth to be found in the latter, and it'd be better to complement the former rather than toss it aside as moldy. A large amount of people enjoy working with their hands and creating, and would likely derive more enjoyment from these activities than all the fancy-pants stuff going on at Pudding's school. Topics touched upon include automation to such an extent that most people will not need to do anything, though we never arrive to the logical conclusion—the question is simply posed. The same for AIs becoming self-aware and techno-optimist dreams of utopia. Serufu and Pudding are representatives of the old and new, respectively, and while they bump heads a bit (um, literally, even), the story fixates on the two of them repairing their childhood friendship, which more directly mirrors a reconciliation of the two worlds. It's nice and hopeful, but it's optimistic in a way that only a CGDCT series could be.
It's actually kind of rare to see these themes handled at all outside of bleak cyberpunk, where they criticize certain excesses of technology or society, but never look at what preceded the current state. Or some kind of Miyazaki or Origin: Spirits of the Past treatment, where it's good treehugger and cave-dweller versus bad industrialist and warmonger. Ultimately, though, the sad truth is that the idea of a "DIY" club is less and less likely, and it would probably be scrapped from the school budget, with many schools canceling their art programs already; the likelihood is even greater in an over-protective society, where schoolmarms are afraid kids will poke themselves with a screwdriver or something. Not that that's a knock against the series, it just makes it a little more bittersweet, which is a plus or a minus depending on your tastes, I suppose.
An area where these SoL/CGDCT series are usually lacking is in the visual department. One of the reasons they often feel so trite is because there is the sense that they're machine-made, ironically enough, like they're the same repackaged product pumped out of the assembly line as the last. True to its concept, DIY!! feels about as handcrafted as you can get for a 2022 TV anime, while still having the occasional glimpse of something 3D & nasty, like a car, helicopter, or drone, but the CGI is relegated mostly to the technological parts of the city that surround or loom over the girls. We're largely treated to warmer hand-drawn backdrops and pastel colors for contrast, as well as a somewhat vintage-looking vignette, lending it an almost storybook feel at times. The themes allow the art direction to come to life, because of the required contrast, whereas it would usually be dead. If anything, janky, stiff bits of CGI here and there in DIY!! clashes purposively with the smoother 2D character acting. The animation, while not always having a high frame rate, is very fun and expressive and accentuates the characters' personalities well.
The music also complements the themes, shifting between quirky and zany. It's not the farcical and pretend "OMG this is so funny" music of too many bad anime, but it has a warm acoustic tendency, even using whistling, but it will also add a contrast of light technologic weirdness and warmly textured ambience. The measure of warm to cold in terms of the audio is quite similar to the way the technology is juxtaposed with the low-tech and organic.
In terms of characters, they are all archetypal, and while not necessarily deep characters, they really don't need to be. They're fun and remain charming throughout. There's definitely a big focus on the bandaid-prone Serufu and the cheek-puffing Pudding, with Jobko's child prodigy brashness getting most of the remaining attention. The other 3 are nice to have around, but time constraints leave them feeling a little less explored.
I'm looking forward to the sequel where the girls retreat deep into the forest to start their own farm and gardens and DIY buildings, with various hidden bunkers and tree houses. The Moebomber Manifesto is on every bookshelf and is dogeared nightly like a bible. Delightful tea breaks ensue as they booby trap their surroundings to fend off the government agents hunting them down. From time to time, they even have to sneak into the oppressive technocratic state to bring in fresh recruits for their DIY underground resistance group. When a studio such as Pine Jam has me looking forward to the second season of a CGDCT anime, it's quite a feat (not feet)!
