What They Say:
“We’re In Our Second Year Now”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the girls having arrived in their second year now, Yuyushiki at least gives us a pretense of time moving forward rather than just sitting in one period for the whole thing. Often those tend to feel a bit drawn out, but when you do things like this, covering most of their first year in the first seven episodes, you can also feel like it’s too ethereal in a way, as you don’t get to know the cast well enough or see any real changes that happen to them. That said, having teenage kids myself, changes can be subtle and hard to see anyway as time goes on and most of a high school life really is just the day to day experiences and all it entails. The small moments can be the most memorable, especially if you’re like these girls and not doing a lot of big things such as sports, plays or other involved activities.
Not surprisingly, Yuzuko wants to do something big now that they’re second years, but they’re all unrealistic and just get pushback from the others because of it. Cutely, when they talk about the previous year and all the normal activities we see in other series like the culture festival, sports days and the like, we mostly just get the dialogue about it and a few stills showing off more of their time in the summer as well. It fills in the gaps in a rather amusing way, but it manages to work well enough. The show also spends some early time with Chiho as she continues to want to be a part of the group, but Yuzuko’s questions and antics – and even her simplicity – proves to be too much for the utterly shy Chiho. Which normally might grate on me, but she’s used so sparingly that I can’t really find too much to give her grief about. Besides, Chiho would cry.
The episode naturally hits a lot of smaller moments as it goes on since it is a four panel manga adaptation and that leads lead to some cute moments. Questions about ketchup are comical and we get to see a few more characters get stronger roles here, such as Fumi, who introduces herself with her love of her favorite drink. And there’s always their favorite teacher, Mom, which is just hilarious to watch even if you kind of wish the teacher wouldn’t let them get away with it as much as they do. But it does serve to just further reinforce the bonds that all of them have, and the way that some of them really get away with mocking her. There’s a hilarious piece with them towards the end where Yuzuko and Yukari really do a number on her when it comes to saying “Naked boobs” in order to achieve their desired goal. So out of place for a school, but you can see why they get away with it.
In Summary:
While the passage of time in anime can be tricky sometimes, more so when it comes to the school based shows since you can often miss actual growth and events, I do like that the show moved forward well enough here to give us the girls in their second year and what that will entail. Which is, admittedly, nothing different. Seeing the bigger events in their first year just talked about with a few montage shots at best is a cute way of covering otherwise bland and overly repetitive material so it wins points for me on that. But it also takes out some of the iconic things that happen in many school based series, making you almost feel a little cheated. Thankfully, we get extended time with mom and boob talk, so it’s all good in the end.
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.
