What They Say:
Yuzuko, Yui, and Yukari, three girls who just started high school in spring, are always together. After school, the three of them attend their own “Data Processing Club” with two computers and a whiteboard between them, searching for random words on Google and then discussing the results. Their day to day life is mostly uneventful, mainly only consisting of girls flirting, but for some reason it’s difficult to tear one’s eyes away from this new generation of high school girls’ communication.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the second year of school continue son for the girls, things are still relatively the same for them and there’s some comfort in that. We did get a mild expansion in the previous episode that brought in some new characters, which gives the core trio a bit more to play off at times, but they still feel more like a distraction than someone that’s full defined. Kei and Fumi have particular styles and attitudes about them that definitely works in their favor since they’re not like the main trio of girls, and their relationship is different with them, but there’s something that has me a little uneasy about them drawing a bit more time from the core trio. That happened with YuriYuri for me and the show started to drag the more characters they introduced.
Seeing Chiho with both Kei and Fumi helps to give Chiho a bit more of a personality since she’s been around the edges of the show for awhile now and has had a hard time getting closer with them. Seeing how Fumi and Kei get along has her trying to do some of the same kinds of greetings with Yuzuko, which strikes them all as quite odd an unusual, which is as it should be. While we get some fun with Chiho making mild inroads with the core trio, the show does spend more of its time with our leads than anything else, which is fun when they have their lunch breaks and the like and end up just being close together with what they do. And that actually gets Yuzuko to wonder if their conversations sound silly to others, just like she thinks other people’s conversation sound silly to her.
The girls interact well with each other throughout, but we also see Chiho drawn in a bit in a way that’s really fun as just she and Yui hang out in the club for a bit while the other two run off to get some things. Chiho’s coming out of her shell is slow and steady, as she’s still shy and nervous, but there’s a lot to like with her and her innocent nature. The girls in general continue to be fun to hang around with and it’s amusing to see how Chiho goes back to her group and in her own way talks up the Data Processing Club girls and how friendly they are. There’s an adorableness to Chiho that works here so that even as she smiles and thinks fondly on what she experienced, it doesn’t come across as bragging or something to make the others feel small.
In Summary:
Yuyushiki does its obligatory data processing side towards the end here with some cute visualis of their project of the moment, but mostly the show spends its time dealing with the wider range of girls than we have before. The series has done well focusing on the primary three along with Mom a few times, but here it’s really taking to the class president and her two friends to try and expand things a bit more. It’s a double edged sword that leaves me a bit concerned that what works could be sublimated for things that don’t work and we lose time with the characters that drew us to the series, but so far it seems to be handling things fairly well. But there’s a hesitancy to it all that I keep feeling when it comes to it, something that I hope I’m proven wrong about.
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.
