Transform and roll out

Impressions:

Maaaaaan. If I had know that this was just going to be 21 straight minutes of Kisaragi with next to no Prof, and essentially no Noda or Tomokane silliness at all, I wouldn’t have been looking forward to it quite so much. Kisaragi is easily the most dull character of the bunch and she’s sure as hell not who I think of when I look back and remember why I enjoyed this show. I wanted my Color Rangers, Magical Witch Nodamiki, or at least some chicken pantomime. Not twenty minutes of Kisaragi bumbling around.

The first half was a bit better than the second, mainly because Noda and Tomokane were actually engaged in the plot for more than 15 seconds each. The new (to us) teacher emasculated Tomokane and Kisaragi for their lack of style, so Namiko and Noda tried to teach them a bit about fashion. I do question Namiko’s fire hydrant dress, but it did look okay in her imagination. The second half was essentially just Kisaragi wandering around the school. Homura (I think that’s his name)’s evolution into some kind of art supply mecha was easily the highlight, although Ararararakawa continued cardboard box shenanigans were also decent enough. However, that does speak to the trouble that a segment is in when Arakawa is one of the high points.

Truly mysterious nabe.

Impressions:

An episode of nothing special, letting this series end just how it began, and that’s perfectly fine. Better than fine really, since the status quo is generally to fabricate some drama in the last 20 minutes. Granted, Namiko was sick for the first 5 minutes of the episode, so I was a little worried that they’d get overly angsty on that front, but then they hopped to the next day, she was all better, and they all had mystery nabe at her house… emphasis on the mystery, thanks to Noda and Tomokane. I wish they had done a little more with the background splash imagery stuff, but otherwise, a solid episode.

I do wish that they hadn’t jammed the instrumental version of the OP into the episode completely at random. It’s a nice tune, but they literally just dumped it into a segment at the middle that was completely unimportant. The ending theme this time was an ensemble song (I believe) that started a minute or two from the credit roll and just continued through it. A decent song, but I prefer the real ending(s). The comic highlight for me definitely had to be Namiko trying to put Noda into the child’s seat of the shopping cart. I’m almost surprised that Noda didn’t go for it.

I’m just sad that it’s over now, but at least there’s still the OVA to look forward to and the everlasting hope that they’ll produce more of it some day.

Final Thoughts:

One of the most consistently enjoyable comedies I’ve seen in a long while oozing charm, wit, and never forgetting that it was and is a very simple comic series. I wish that all of the short comic adaptations could maintain the quick pace and rapidfire jokes of their medium instead of trying to repackage themselves into slow paced snorefests stretching a four panel joke out for a full minute or longer. Most of the cast deserves a lot of praise too. Every single character was well defined without us ever having to be beaten over the head with some archetype or angst-tastic life lesson. It probably also helps that every single one of them comes off as, if not intelligent, then at least very knowledgable about the subject matter. It’s so much more pleasant to watch unhinged geniuses than blithering idiots. I still haven’t warmed up to Awarararara and her club, but they weren’t really that bad, just sadly lacking compared to Noda and Tomokane’s antics.

There are some slower patches to the show, and at its core, the BGM is largely forgettable, and it really does boil down to "spastic girls acting silly," so I realize that it’s probably not to some people’s tastes, but unlike so many other shows cut from the same vein, the focus is on the comedy, and that really makes all the difference. You’re not going to find this show trying to sell you some cutesy catchphrase, or telling an ‘inspiring’ story about making friends, or something so obsessed with being artistic that it forgot to include jokes, just a fun little comedy about art students. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

NICE TRAP.

Impressions:

A decent episode, I suppose, but I still don’t find the others in the club all that amusing. At least they were doing something that could have maybe been mistaken for art this week, although they’re all kind of terrible at it. Awararara got it into her head to write a children’ fairy tale and roped the rest of them into it, eventually grabbing Kisaragi too because Awara’s initial protagonist reminded her of Kisaragi. I did like Awara picturing herself as a princess, and the others pointing out that she was more like a character from Sayuki or similar.

When we got back to the real central cast, things picked up at least a little bit. I particularly enjoyed Noda stamping Tomokane and then ending up with "Confidential" stamped on her head for the next few minutes. Not that the other choices weren’t good too, but the contents of Noda’s head are probably best left unknown. There wasn’t really too much intelligent art this episode either. Namiko and Kisaragi looked at some sketch paper, and Kisaragi imagined one of the crazy art drawers as a mecha, but not too much else really stood out this week. I’m not certain Prof even had more than five lines. She was probably responsible for Kisaragi’s sketched cat breeding anyway. On those lines, I don’t even think I want to contemplate why someone might have sketched "NICE TRAP" onto an easle.

Preview:

Food, glorious food.

Keep her away from hard drives.

Impressions:

Ah, GA. You are one of the few glorious little sparkling lights for this season that brightens up my week. Another pretty unfocused episode with the second half having practically nothing to do with the first. I had hoped they’d spend a lot more time on designing a mascot character for the blood drive, but sadly, that only lasted maybe two minutes before they all got distracted and tried to play word association games to brainstorm. Otherwise though, not really much in the way of actual art this week, but a lot of focus on the lovely Nozaki and, at least for the first part, the also adorable Usami as well.

Speaking of Nozaki, and if I may go off on a tangent for a moment, one thing that I absolutely adore that AIC has done with the series is the clothing and hair styles for all the characters. Noda tends to overshadow all the rest with her strangely color jackets and rapidly changing hairstyles, but despite them all being in the same school uniform, they managed to make each stand out above and beyond the obligatory anime hair styles. Nozaki’s got her super stylish hip belt and usually goes without a jacket (not to mention the super stylish puffy socks), Tomo shows off her masculinite by ditching the ribbon, Kisaragi’s sleeves are too long, etc. They’re all subtle details, but you do unconsciously pick up on those things and they work to reinforce the characters. Of course, it also helps that everybody does change in and out of their normal clothing ‘mode’ a lot as well, so it’s easier to see all the differences.

Anyway, back to the episode, like always, I’m really not entirely certain what to say beyond pointing out some of the jokes that I found particularly great. Prof’s natural magnetism was a great one, as was Tomokane leaping to her princess’ aid, only to drink the ‘magical healing drink’ herself. Pill popping Usami trying to bulk up for the next blood drive was also worth a chuckle. I also must confess some relief that AIC seems to at least be aware of how ridiculous and redundant their show’s name is. Not that it’s stopping them from plastering it on an eyecatch, but I think I have faith that at least somewhere in their company is someone rolling their eyes at the redundancy. Possibly the same person who then let this particular shot of Noda slip through out of spite.

We got new ED animation this week too. Notice how they’re switching the ED animation whenever it’s Horie’s turn to sing? It’s okay though, I favor her too.

ED #3 (Nozaki ver)

Preview:

Pretty girls. Tasty crepes. Evil Nodas.

Frizzy.

Impressions:

A pretty decent episode, but I wasn’t really feeling it this time. I think it’s because the characters weren’t really doing anything in particular for the entire episode. There wasn’t even the normally extremely loose connection between the various little skits and activities and instead they were all just going somewhat stir crazy from the weather. The art bits were also pretty lacking this week, with the only particularly major thing that I can recall being a quick lecture by the Prof on light spectrums at the very very end.

There were still some nice bits. Prof started pulling random stuff out of her jacket, and Noda tried to imitate flying squirrels using the wind. I also liked Tomokane smashing Noda’s cracker train as she was tooling around the table. I also enjoyed the first minute or two of the Color Rangers versus Chickenzilla, but like I said, that segment just kept going and going. They also sort of half introduced Noda’s sister, who is some kind of faceless celebrity in the others’ class. Then again, that was less of an introduction than the dummy got, so… who even knows if we’ll see her again. I did kind of like the little scene between Awara and "the guy with glasses whose name I can’t be bothered to remember." Subtle romance is such a nice change of pace, especially when you’re not beaten over the head with it.

Preview:

More forbidden relationships.

Don’t mess with her tone.

Impressions:

As much as I like this show, this episode had some production issues. The first two minutes after the OP were all but unanimated and in the case of the "what’s the defining feature of each other" joke, ripped wholesale from the source with just voices added. There were also quite a few animation irregularities (animation stuttering for example) that came and went through the rest of the episode. There was one particularly egregious mistake where they apparently forgot to include a voice sample. Nozaki’s mouth was moving, the camera was focused on her, but… there was just sound whatsoever.

Despite that, this was still a pretty decent episode, if even more irreverent in the latter going than usual. I wish Kisaragi’s dream sequence had been a lot shorter, or maybe that they hadn’t shown one of the last parts of it in the preview for last week. It sort of ruins the joke of the dream within a dream within a dream when you spend the entire time knowing about the last iteration. The first half was more focused on colors in general and then tones specifically. Everybody talked about what colors they thought they were and what that meant, and then we did a very rapid shift through all the characters presenting all the different types of tones without even pretending to maintain any kind of cohesion. That’s fine for the most part, but between the almost 8 minute dream(s) sequence and that, this episode felt a bit more like a run-by mugging than they usually do.

Preview:

Tie-dye and razor blades.

Now with less Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

I had this done about 7 hours ago, but like an imbecile, I thought to myself that I could wait a little while and get a real raw. Oops.

Impressions:

Yeah, so… my Japanese got quite the workout this episode. My attention span is usually about 45 seconds on a good day, when the characters start lecturing about the evolution of art from Mesopotamian figures of the human form to paintings of Greek goddesses, I can feel my eyes glaze over and consciousness fade. The first half was still pretty good, and the second half had a few good gags. I particularly enjoyed them solving Noda’s little hissy fit over not having tour headphones by dropping Tomokane’s headphones on her and then having Masa talk about things. Masa’s proposed reality bending horrors of an art exhibition at the start was also excellent.

The main problem with this episode is that there is only so much you can do with people looking at various things in a museum. They had a bit of fun at the exhibition in the first half since they could screw around with the paintings and run around like their normal ADD selves, but once they got to the real museum, there wasn’t really much left except to watch people look at things. No strange daydreams or weird delusions anywhere in the second half, just… old art. Thankfully, next week looks to be a step into surrealism which should be all sorts of fun.

Preview:

Altered reality.

Boo. Down with the outsiders.

Impressions:

I said it before and I’ll say it again, I really don’t like Awararara’s group at all. They’re not educational, they’re not entertaining, and they take away precious time that could be spent watching Tomokane eat paste. They had a few moments, like beheading each other in front of Noda, but the two guys are totally interchangeable, and even on their most ADHD day, Noda and Tomokane are artistic maestros compared to those bozos. Speaking of Tomokane, I realized this week that I have absolutely no idea what her given name is because they introduced her brother, who joined the others. Unfortunately, he’s nowhere near as entertaining as she is. Tomokane♂ does at least have some artistic abilities, unlike the rest of his squadron, but aside from that, he’s just a stereotypical sickly guy. Meh.

As you might infer from the above, this episode was definitely not one of my favorites. The others found an old supply of haunted house stuff that their predecessors left behind and staged an impromptu haunted house to terrorize random people, who ended up being Usami (who is very terroizable) and then she sent in th GA crowd. Everybody acted pretty predictibly. Namiko got to lecture on sponges briefly (the one educational moment of the episode), Tomokane broke a lot of stuff, and Kisaragi cowered in fear. Masa was the ghostbuster of the group and pulled them out of hiding by scraping her fingernails across the chalkboard. Good work, Prof. If only she had done that fifteen minutes prior, maybe the episode could have focused on their group instead.

Preview:

Pictures at an exhibition.

Zzz…

Impressions:

Meh. A pretty dull episode with the highlight being that they finally got to the Horie Yui version of the ED, in addition to switching up the little chibis into doing somewhat different activities. My biggest issue was that it spent about half the episode on the other art club and I just find them really dull. They were better this week than last since there was a lot less angst and at least a bit more weirdness, but Noda and Tomokane’s energy is what really drives the show for me, and removing them from the equation makes it something of a chore to watch. Awara and the cardboard boxes she sleeps in are nothing compared to the Color Rangers and it feels like I’m missing out on potential fun when we get stuck watching her putz around.

Unfortunately, even for the first half, Noda was on her ritalin or something and didn’t do anything at all except put her hair in pigtails. Tomokane was at least mildly amusing in her escalation of how she addressed Sotoma, but I’m really throwing the episode a bone with that compliment. Nozaki’s birthday celebration was about as boring as they could have made it. There wasn’t even any real art this week, unless you count design sketches, but that wasn’t educational in the slightest… and my first thought about the bunny cell phones was "that is so very very impractical." That is probably why I’m not an artist.

Preview:

Haunted classrooms.

Titling these entries would be much easier if episodes had any sort of cohesion.

Impressions:

A marvelous episode all around. Like just about all of them, it did slow down a little bit at the very end and felt the need to tack on some dumb little moral to the whole thing, but the other 21 minutes were great. On the education side, I’ve actually had a lot of experience (and I know that I’ve complained here many a time) with shot framing. Move the focus ever so slightly, and you send a completely different message to your audience. I’ve also run into AIDMA before (Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory, Action), which is an older model for consumer behavior (AISAS being the newer and more popular one these days), but to my disappointment, it was just a little throwaway joke.

On the humor side of things, I loved the gags at lunch. Noda went for the spiked soup, but Nozaki deftly switch the bowls to give Noda a taste of her own medicine. I also want to know how to do Noda’s dancing salt and pepper trick. They bounced around much more in the second half than the first, but I did really enjoy the segement where they kept accidentally ruining the canvas and just turned it into a new style each time. It was very reminiscent of the Color Rangers segment in the first episode. I miss the Color Rangers already. Noda vandalizing Tomokane’s jacket/frock with ‘badass’ flames was also good for a chuckle. I really have to keep reminding myself that Tomokane is female though. Maybe she should stop using the bloody masculine.

Preview:

Wotcha!