First year students at a new school find themselves drawn into restarting a defunct club while having cute fun. Sounds familiar…
What They Say:
Yuzuko, Yukari, and Yui explore their new high school for the perfect club to join.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the four panel manga series of the same name, Yuyushiki is a new twelve episode series animated by Kinema Citrus and directed by Kaori. The show is based off of the manga that began back in 2008 by Komata Mikami which has four volumes to its name so far. And it kind of breaks a recent trend where four panel comics were getting adapted as short-form anime series, which has generally worked out fairly well from my perspective. Yuyushiki instead goes for the more traditional full length episode format, but it breaks it up with varying length stories within each episode. And that does help to make it enjoyable as it’s not overplaying any particular gag and lets the characters all have their individual moments to shine. But there’s the downside in that there feels like there’s less of an overall narrative to really bind it all together.
The series introduces us to three different girls as they enter their first year of high school. Of the mix, we’re initially introduced to Yukari, a quiet girl who is excited about the new uniform and is generally looking forward to her high school career, something that at the commencement ceremony is talked about being something that they’ve all worked hard to achieve over the years. Yui ends up eventually meeting a pair of other girls that she’s known in middle school, hoping they all have classes together again, Yuzuko and Yui. Yuzuko is your typical friendly and outgoing type with some amusing personality quirks with how she views the world and she often draws the tall and somewhat serious Yui into situations that she’s not exactly eager to be in.
The trio are basically pretty good friends and the dynamic is relatively straight forward with Yukari being a bit naive, Yuzuko getting them into a few comical situations and Yui trying to keep them all in line but being swept up by it. There’s a bit of cute crushing going on from Yui’s perspective at times as well since they’re all so close together, but it’s just under the surface. The opening episode runs through some simplistic things as we get to know the base personalities and a look at how they all interact with each other. The school gets a bit of a nod itself, but mostly it’s just seeing how the girls deal with it all. The main thrust that comes in during a good part of the second half is the introduction of the on-hiatus Data Processing Club, which is a small clubroom with a couple of computers. You can see the interest in the girls in having their own space, but mostly it’s just them screwing around online and making all sorts of non-sequiturs. Which is, admittedly, pretty cute.
In Summary:
Yuyushiki doesn’t break any ground here with what it does, featuring cute girls doing cute things, but it does have a certain charm and polish about it that makes it enjoyable. The characters don’t have a lot of meat to them at the moment, but I do find myself amused by Yukari’s personality and quirks while also really liking the way Yui plays the straight man, especially as they did change her appearance from the usual that we get with the darker hair and glasses that the type is usually saddled with. Kinema Citrus has a good looking show here that’s light and enjoyable, but it’s also one that won’t really stand out all that much with what it does if it continues down this route.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.