Beautiful Art And Loads Of WTF? – Anime-Gataris First Impressions

Well this right here beloved readers is an example of just a beautiful show. I know I don’t normally go onto the aesthetics of a show like art, animation, or audio. Quite frankly, the show is really well drawn. The color and style of the art and the way the animation flows is really good and catches the eye in a way that’s hard to describe. If I had to, I’d say it reminds me greatly of the art style of Danganronpa. This is a huge reason why I have decided to comment on this amazing aspect first. The other reason being that this show is a huge grab bag of confusion. For clarity, allow my to share the synopsis per Crunchyroll:

I would like to just point that out there before diving into the episode and why it had my curiosity, but now it has my attention. The show kicks off with an interesting take on anime, somewhere in the mix being a gundam style mecha, a magical girl, a bunch of fish, and cherubs. Now if this seems like some sort of Japanese fever dream, well surprise it is a dream. After this interlude we have our protagonist Asagaya Minoa as she cliche wakes up late and scrambles to get ready in a relatively conservative school uniform (Looking at you Akashic Records) and trying to figure out where the hell her dream came from. After some inquiry to her sister, we find she’s well within the realm of casual anime status, far from the Otaku Gamer state of mind we are living. The rest of the trip to school is comical and normal as normal can be.

At casual glance we have comments and references from her classmate, Miko Kouenji or Minocchi where she indicates a light novel “A Report on the Irresponsible and Depressing Chronicles of Me and a Certain Eccentric Childhood Friend.” We are then introduced to Arisu Kamiigusa, a very Karen Tendou appearing blonde who appears flawless but of course is a closeted Otaku instead of a Gamer. More on that and her magical butler/service staff later. We also meet Yui Obata, Minoa’s friend who is focused on running in the Olympics, and the exceptionally flamboyant Roppongi-sensei.

When finally cornered and addressed, we find that Arisu is in fact, a super Otaku. In fact her listing almost puts us to shame in BAYOG and I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t love to have her on as a host. Listening to her listing off such parodies as Hero School, R: Zero, Time Travel Shounen, Bakusou, and a dozen or so others then of course having that awkward moment when you reveal that side of yourself only to realize the person you’re talking to has no fething idea what you’re talking about is a moment I’ve lived all too many times. However after stumping this Otaku, Arisu is dragged along by Minoa to the Anime Club, only to find that (as Arisu already knew) the club was abandoned and empty. The idea is the put to reform said club and obtain the 6 requisite members, two of which being Arisu (obviously) and Minoa (regardless of her objections). In said room, an apparently locked room is found with a beret and a cat for some reason (who also gets stepped on a lot). After this we have our characters depart and Minoa realizes her phone is missing.

So while this show may seem fairly normal and understandable at this point, the show kicks in some cello and Minoa loses the beret which is found by a fairly creepy looking dude. We then have Minoa return to the club room to obtain her phone and the show promptly jumps the shark. We have the cat begin to talk and identify Minoa as the “clumsy type,” holding her phone. So this show right here has obtained my interest and while the VA’s are all fairly low key, I enjoyed their work in this episode as well as the very interesting WTF moments and the OP and ED which were very cheery. Also I have to give props to a show that shamelessly requests viewers to not drop it after the first episode. On that note, please leave a life and comment and feel free to subscribe, watch some of our podcast/gaming videos and please don’t drop us after just one article/video/podcast.