Random Impulses With Senpai – Teekyu Review (Slight NSFW Warning)

Back to an anime review for now! So those of you that have been following us for some time know that I’m a huge Berserk fan, in spite of the terrible art and animation of its newest iteration. The studio responsible for this violent display of death and brutality is a fairly small company, who had created 9 seasons of another show, Teekyu. Per my Random Impulses articles, this is something I decided to give a shot and was very surprised with what I found.

Compared to the gritty and hard-boiled universe of Berserk where man fighting daemons and monsters is shown in visceral detail, Teekyu is a comedy Tennis short. As of right now, you could watch all 103 episodes in 206 minutes. To be specific it’s a 90 second per episode show with a 30 second intro/credit scene with a pacing and humor that puts many others to shame. One of the things I love about shorts is that you can marathon them in such a great time frame. Finishing an entire season in the time most shows take for 1 episode is just daunting, especially when you have a show that jams jokes and randomness in such a bite sized package. To that note, this show is very much so like a potato chip, where its hard to have just one at a time.

So like I said before, this is a Tennis Club show but the tennis aspect is rarely brought up and we typically find the girls in wacky and mostly unrelated stories. First up is the straight man of the comedy team, Yuri Oshimoto, the only normal girl in the show who typically reinforces the fact that these other girls are insane. Next is Kanae Shinjiro, a second year with vibrant pink hair and the strange ability to break physics, reality, and causality at times with her tending to be the most standard type of wild and wacky of the bunch. After her is Nasuno Takamiya, who is so rich its comical. Specifically she tends to solve the group’s problems via throwing money such as buying helicopters, mountains, hydroelectric dams, or just by providing a massive amount of deus ex machina. Finally is Marimo Bando, who is the seemly normal member until you find out she is absolutely insane and comically perverted, at times kidnapping children and ending up wanted by the police and on the news.

 

Even though most people rate it at a 6.5 or so on MyAnimeList, I think its pretty good for what it is. While the animation at times is sloppy or lazy, often repeating very fast moving stills in lieu of frame rate, we have a great comedy show.  While sometimes too random or not relate-able, Teekyu is most of the time a good chuckle inducer. About 99% of the episodes are titled *Something* with Senpai but typically these names can mean nothing. There’s also a couple seasons where the naming style transitions to *Movie Title* with Senpai. One of the aforementioned examples is “Die Hard 3 with Senpai” where the girls make Takoyaki and the only reason for the title is a reference to a puzzle in the show where Kanae tries to explain a method of getting 400 mL in a mixing cup using a 300 mL and 500 mL mixing cup. Just reading that sentence probably took longer than that dialogue did in the show. Beyond that, Millepense also makes good jokes in their content with one great time actually being a QR code being offered as an ingredient in the Takoyaki that leads to the Teekyu website. An example of the random title albeit with little to no explanation is the “Shaun of the Dead with Senpai” episode which was about Marimo and their alien friend Tomarin going to an electronics store (my only thought process is that Shaun from Shaun of the Dead worked in an electronics store). One of the only complaints I have is that the show can be randomly ecchi leaving me unable to show this to my kid brothers in good conscious.

All other components of this aside, they did originally billet this more sportsy than random but the sports premise dropped off after season two (but not without them making the occasional “wasn’t this a sports anime” joke). Also after season two, the ecchi kicked in considerably more. The show still has great random moments 6 seasons in (where I’m at) and I can’t see any reason I’d not recommend this show barring knowing someone doesn’t like random, ecchi, shorts, or laughter. The voice acting and joke delivery is very well done with the pacing just being grand and leaving me realizing that blinking makes you miss half the episode. Are you a fan of shorts? Have you seen this one in particular? Is the CG in Berserk garbage? Leave a like and/or a comment letting me know lest your senpai go HAM and spike a tennis ball into your solar plexus.