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Daily Lives of High School Boys

男子高校生の日常

(Anime)

Slice of Life comedy by Yasunobu Yamauchi

Era: 2010s

Rating: B

Plot: The daily lives of high school boys.

Length: 12 episodes + 6 specials

Thoughts: So what are the daily lives of high school boys? The show starts to answer that with the cliché of the three main character running late to school, toast in their mouth, except one is eating leftover curry, the other has a bowl of ramen. Then Mobile Suits drop from the air, and they find themselves opening a logbook and getting classic fantasy RPG clothes (I'm sure it's referencing Dragon Quest, because, like Japan, it loves Dragon Quest). Why? Because this is a collaboration between SquareEnix and Sunrise, that's why. First sketch has Tadakuni concerned about how approach girls, Hidenori thinks it's time to practice some scenarios about a girl preparing printouts as the school is closing. Except they are in an all-boys school. That's really setting the mood in less than 10 minutes. But, what are the ordinary days of a high school boy? Well, according to the author involve several instances of stealing the underwear of the younger sisters and for some reason wearing it, being bullied by the older sister and her friends, organizing a joint festival with a nearby school, talking trash on the back of your classmates and then in front of them, wondering if you should tell a random girl on the train she has a big hair growing out of a mole on the back of her neck, and maybe the best bit, sitting casually on river bank, next to a girl with literary pretensions who is trying to find inspiration. There's also a story about meeting a middle school classmate, and the girl she's with seems intensely angry at them. Turns out she's not the girlfriend, but his sister, who isn't mad they're taking away their time together or mean, she just lost her contacts. Good the see the Christopher Lambert Special is a worldwide phenomenon.

Such is the life of a high school boy. Each episode has around half a dozen of these stories, all of them a celebration of being, well, a teenage dumbass. Nobody is exactly behaving badly, if anything, they all fell tremendously guilty of, for instance looking up the skirt of a girl either by accident or making her climb a ladder on purpose. Most shows of this genre, feature mostly on all-girls cast on the cuter side of things, and this is where "High School Girls are Funky" segment at the end of the episode shines, where three girls who would be the stars in any other show get a couple of minutes of their own to show being a teenage dumbass is truly an all-gender experience. The specials, bonus features on physical releases, add six more of the shorter stories. It's around half an episode worth, why wouldn't you watch them?

What maybe prevents the show from getting a higher mark is that the characters are completely accessory to the story (the main character is even mostly written off because "his life is too normal" and you might not even notice until he complains just like you might not noticed until now I haven't named any of them), it's a gag anime and other than some recurring bits the characters and their dynamics just aren't that important, all you need to know is that everyone on the screen, including the occasional adult, is a dumbass. Visually it's ok, solid, keeps up with what the story demands etc, and I'm not comparing to the other Nichijou because that's unfair to most shows of this type. Should you watch it? If you are tired of the last 20 years of the school slice of life and the "cute girls doing cute things" subgenre mostly iterating on what Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh and Nichijou did before, this is a perfectly good alternative with a spin. You know, Dumb boys doing dumb things should be a sub-genre.

Plus:

Some of the gags are absolutely incredible, be it in construction or timing

(pats studios on the head) see, you can make SoL shows about boys, too

Minus:

The show doesn't hit as many highs as some other shows of this style do

#anime #daily lives of high school boys #2012 winter #nichibros #rating-B #main post