And thus, comes The Daily Lives of Highschool Boys. originally from a manga by Yamauchi Yasunobu, The Daily Lives of Highschool Boys tells an everyday tale of three boys: Hidenori, Yoshitake and Tadakuni who lives like the male versions of Azumanga Daioh characters. Along with several friends and female side characters, these three go on with their daily lives recreating Dragon Quest, talking about something and attempting some crossdressing. It's pretty much related to any high school kid, since most of these things the three have done are similar to some of the stuff we've done.
The show's format runs like a sketch, where each sketch are dedicated to 5 minutes of the main characters and/or the side characters. It works in a sense and some of them are funny, and even if some of the sketches aren't as funny as the rest, atleast it brought a smile to my face. And the show tends to end with a post-credit sketch featuring three girls, who are living parodies of slice of life shows like K-On! and A-Channel. And sometimes, these girls are funnier than the main characters and it brings some irony and surprise to this show, since the main focus was set on the boys.
If you're a fan of British comedy like me, then the best way to describe the series and its humor is like watching the characters from the Inbetweeners acting like they're in the Last of the Summer Wine. In fact, it is exactly that: It's basically Last of the Summer Wine but with characters from the Inbetweeners. I mean, it's slow yet it's funny but at the same time, peaceful. It's like watching the antics of teenagers from the window of a Starbucks joint. While you're sipping you macchiato and pretending to listen to your stupid hipster friends, you're actually paying attention to a bunch of teens outside the window recreating Dragon Quest, and then retweeting it to make sure that everyone cares what you fucking saw, eventhough they don't because they're too busy trying to read a book at a river bank.
The cast of this series is basically a crossover cast of Gintama, Code Geass and Persona 4, especially when Hidenori and Yoshitake are voiced by Gintama's Tomokazu Sugita and Kenichi Suzumura. Tadakuni is voiced by the talented Miyu Irino. He has a really good voice for a tsukkomi type of character, and he should be doing more of those to be honest. Other than the three, you also have the likes of guys voiced by Akira Ishida, Hiroki Yasumoto, Daisuke Namikawa, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Takahiro Sakurai, Showtaro Morikubo and Jun Fukuyama to name a few. SUrprisingly, this show also has an excellent female cast featuring Yoko Hikasa, Ayahi Takagaki, Risa Hayamizu, Yuuki Aoi, Ami Koshimizu, Yuu Kobayashi, Shiwa Saito, Kaori Mizuhashi and Yukana to date. It has one of the best A-list cast of seiyuus i've seen in an anime, and their voices are done pretty well. I love yoko Hikasa as Yassan, the awkward literary girl who has a crush on Hidenori but is suffering from a case of introverted awkwardness that pumps up to eleven everytime she meets him. She's exactly like Mio, except more awkward.
Infact, with a cast like that, they'd actually look like a government cabinet where Tomokazu Sugita is the Prime Minister and Jun Fukuyama is the Minister of Roadworks or something like that. Infact, imagine a Japanese government where the cabinet ministers consists of nothing but the cast of Daily Lives of Highschool Boys. Imagine a government like that, and if it happens Japan would become the greatest country in Asia, where its policies consist of Miyu Irino crossdressing to attract foreign investors or Yuu Kobayashi throwing pies to members of TEPCO in the face. I'd support a government like that.
The series is directed by Shinji Takamatsu from Gintama who's work is excellent in this series. There are certain quirks from Gintama that you see in this, with the camera shots and Tadakuni's room resembling the Yorozuya most of the time. Speaking of Gintama, the addition of Sugita, Suzumura and Audio Highs as composers makes for a great experience watching this, because it feels alot like Gintama set in high school, and it succeeds in that compared to the Sket Dance anime which also aims to do that yet somehow misses the mark.
Overall, great series. if you want to remember about the stupid things you did as a teenagers, then you should be watching this instead of telling your friends and family members because they really don't give a fuck about the time you ran naked during a class trip, because no one wants to remember that.
