Opening the first episode of your series with your protagonists doing an air band version of your opening song at the cultural festival is one thing. Following that up with the main protagonist doing a painfully impression of one anime character imitating another anime character imitating the automatic closing doors of the Tokyo Metro is quite another.
And then the rest of the episode is mostly spent chewing over this failure of a standup routine. The sheer audacity of Maesetsu! had me breathless. None of this was funny by the way, but then I don’t think it was meant to be. Maesetsu! — apparantly the Japanese name for warm up comedians at television shows and such — is about the lives of a group of friends trying to become standup comedians, but that doesn’t mean this is a comedy. Nevertheless, the comedic timing of this scene, if not the skit is impeccable. It’s clear that if this series wants to do comedy, it can. It just choses not to for now.
Deep diving into a joke that will never be more than chuckle worthy at best is a strange way to start a series. Almost as strange as starting it with a five minute digression in how to eat a chocolate cornet. There’s something very Lucky Starish about Maesetsu! indeed. Not only is the manga version drawn by Yoshimizu Kagami, Lucky Star‘s creator, but you may have also recognised the voice of the teacher at the end of the video. Yes, that’s Hirano Aya, Konata’s voice actress listening to a bad imitation of her character doing a bad imitation of another anime character doing an imitation of the automatic closing doors of the Tokyo Metro. Brilliant.
Another thing I liked about this first episode was that I felt like we were dropping in on an established group of friends. There weren’t the usual first episode scenes of characters introducing themselves to each other even though they’d been friends for years. As in the scene above, you get to know them through how they interact with each other. Again, not unlike how Lucky Star did back in the day. Red haired Mafuyu is the ideas woman; blue haired Fubuki tries to implement them. Here they are refining their routine. Mafuyu suggests Fubuki should pause momentarily before responding to her gag. Cue five long seconds of Fubuki doing exactly that. Still not funny, but again not meant to be.
Judging from the first episode this will be a talky series. The character designs are neat, slightly softer and rounder than we’ve gotten used to. But that’s about it for visual appeal. It’s mostly people talking to each other. If you need something to happen on the screen at the same time, this probably isn’t a series for you.
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