…which is made more regrettable given what this show compares them to.
Though I usually don’t make a point of watching anime focusing on 6th grade girls, I might make an exception for this show after a pretty good first episode. To be honest, this show didn’t show up on my radar at all over the past few weeks as its description seemed rather bland and gave the impression that it might just be an endless parade of panty shots. Fortunately, this episode was able to keep those to a minimum while providing one of the funnier episodes from any series I’ve seen in a while. What made it even better was that the show didn’t rely too much on fan service, but instead used the naiveté of sixth graders as its source of laughs.
This episode revolves around the plight of Satoshi Yabe, a new teacher put in charge of class 6-3. His first day starts out normally enough as he meets the rest of the school’s faculty, including a conveniently clumsy and full figured school nurse. Unfortunately for Yabe, three of his students are the Marui triplets, who are reputedly the worst triplets the world has ever known. The dark music and imagery used to introduce Futaba (far left of the first picture) highlighted the danger of these girls.
But I can't!
From what I could gather from the character introductions and the relatively small sample size of the show thus far is that Futaba is a perverted moron, which only makes her strength more dangerous. As much as I disliked Futaba, I found Mitsuba’s character to be even less interesting. Though there is still time for her character to be fleshed out, the only appeal she seems to have is that she is more mature than her sisters and a bit too sadistic.
The sad truth is that this is why some people become teachers.
In my opinion, the shows only interesting character thus far is Hitoha. By the end of the episode I felt that whenever she was in a scene a laugh was sure to follow, which is something I couldn’t say for the other two sisters. In addition to the Nipples scene, it was her deductive reasoning that started the girls’ quest to deprive Yabe of his manhood. While her comedic timing was certainly top notch, she also seems to have the most potential, plot wise, for the rest of the series. The most poignant moment of the show, though it wasn’t really funny, was when she asked for her friends to stand up and no one did. If I was a betting man (which I am), I would bet that she will make some sort of friend by the end of the series. Also, does anyone have any idea what is up with that book of hers?
I could give you three guesses as to where she is aiming, but you only need one.
Since I believe this is a show (or at least this episode) worth watching, I should warn you that the first segment of the show wasn’t really that funny. Class 6-3 basically plays a variant of musical chairs as a way to introduce the sisters and their personalities, and it accomplishes that goal, but little else. However, the action really picks up in the last two-thirds of the episode. First, the girls do their best to hook up their teacher with the school nurse, Aiko Kuriyama, but go about it in the worst way possible.
His head says no, but his hands say yes.
The last part of the episode focused on the new class pet, Nipples the hamster. Though this is obviously an immature name that predictably elicits fairly crass jokes, it all seems to work perfectly because of the situation. I don’t know if any of you remember your sixth grade selves, but sixth graders really would give a hamster a name like Nipples. What made things even funnier was that some class members seemingly didn’t even grasp the meaning of what they were saying.
The hidden danger of orgies.
If I had to find a fault in this otherwise enjoyable opener, I couldn’t get over how all the characters looked like Alvin and the chipmunks with their teeth, but I’m not really a fan of anime teeth to begin with. Mind you, I did enjoy the animation as a whole since it underscored the character’s youth and the setting even though it is a bit different. Going forward, this show is probably not going to offer much in the way of a plot, but will likely be in the same vein as Azumanga Daioh, but only a little less tasteful. It also seems that there will be a wide variety of side characters given the amount of detail some of them received throughout the episode and in the ending. This is probably a good thing given my lack of interest towards most of the main characters. As I haven’t read the manga, I don’t know if the show can stay at this comedic level over the long run without wearing too thin or relying on too much fan service, but I’d give this show a shot for the time being.
A little bit of trivia: the manga was written by a woman, much like Working!! was. And the show brings back much of the staff that worked on the first season of Minami-Ke. That’s worrisome, but in a good way, as the first cour of Minami-ke was SIDE-SPLITTINGLY FUNNY.
I have to say that I am pretty surprised a women wrote the manga after seeing the content of the first episode. But then again the show is about three girls.