Seitokai Yakuindomo – Wrap-up

SYD’s formula was simple: High school slice of life chock full of plays on words, double entendres, and good ol’ fashioned sex jokes, almost always delivered with good timing. The quality of the jokes varied throughout, but the series on the whole was consistently funny, just not laugh-out-loud ha-ha funny, the way Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was at moments.

According to the ANN, this is only the third anime produced primarily by GoHands, and the first that I saw, and I enjoyed the different character and animation style it afforded. The voice-work was also spot-on and diverse, with even minor characters given very interesting voices. There were also several nice bits that parodied various genres of anime, and they’re convincingly done to the point that I’d probably enjoy a GoHands non-comedy as much as a comedy, if they did one.

Besides the growing hints of romance between Tsuda and Shino (which naturally doesn’t go anywhere; this is slice of life) I initially felt like one could watch these thirteen episodes in just about any order and not miss that much; it was very episodic. Of course, if one did they wouldn’t get the second half of the final episode, which is a recap with a twist; all of the incidents the cast remenices on are either embellished or completely new material, much of which trancends the high school setting, satirizing other genres. Rating: 3

Seitokai Yakuindomo – Thru 6

Just about halfway through now, this has been fairly solid. Sometimes the humor is a bit childish or lewd for the sake of lewd, but the deadpan delivery by the characters followed by the reaction of the straight-man is usually pretty funny. The rubber-stamp bumper card thing is  also overdone.

This is a slice-of-life anime that hasn’t gone down the “high school harem” road (and likely never will), and has only shown the slightest hints of any romance between the many female characters and the outnumbered male lead. Surprising, considering he’s one of only a handful of guys at a school of hundreds. So while there isn’t much of a story here, the characters and their ridiculous conversations are the focus. I’ll watch the final seven episodes, but like “Working!!”, I’m not expecting a finite ending. Rating: 3

Seitokai Yakuindomo – First Impressions

Seitokai can get a little blue at times, but the banter is quick and feisty enough to dig itself out of most potential holes. In Maid-sama we have a female prez in a mostly male school; at this school its seemingly 100 girls for every guy and with a premise like that there’s always the potential to quickly descend into mindless harem territory.

Thankfully this introductory episode takes a totally different (and better) direction: rather than everyone falling in love with the guy, their impressions of him are more varied. This show has lots of weird, possibly maladjusted characters bouncing off one normal one, and the results are more often funny than boring. Rating: 2.5