How do sheltered girls in an all-girls school learn how to deal with romance and relations with the other sex? The answer is “very awkwardly.” Which is fine for us, as awkwardness can often be the start of good comedy.
What They Say:
Fujisaki Girls Academy, commonly known as “Fujijo,” is famous for being attended by distinguished young ladies. Stubborn, righteous, and known as “the wild one,” student council president aide Riko. Brilliant, beautiful, just, and admired by all students as “Miss Fujisaki,” student council president Maki. Shy, easily embarrassed, and clumsy, student council secretary Suzu. Charmingly thick eyebrows and fluffy hair, student council vice president Eno. Money-loving and coolly watching everyone study from behind her glasses, treasurer Sayo.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
From Takashi Aoshima and Masahiko Ohta, the team behind the recent comedies Yuruyuri and Kotoura-san, comes a new series based upon the four-panel comic by Ruri Miyahara. Set at the elite Fujisaki Girls Academy, we meet a very unusual student council whose idea of answering queries from the general student body goes just a bit overboard.
But overboard is good.
We’re first introduced to Riko Kurahashi, a tomboy middle school girl whose rough and forward personality earns her the admiration of most of the more ladylike girls who call her “the Wild Kid.” In many ways, Riko is almost exactly how you would imagine Amu Hinamori of Shugo Chara will turn out in a few years time when she enters middle school. It so happens that she contrasts starkly with the school’s idol, Natsuo Maki, the Student Council President. Polite, calm, elegant and beautiful to match, you wonder if she had accidentally walked off the grounds of Lillian Girls Academy and wound up in this weird comedy world. While Maki is very intelligent, capable of handling all student council business by herself without any help, what she lacks is common sense and any experience outside of her sheltered, cloistered world. Thus, in private, she engages in wild fantasies of what it must be like to have a boyfriend taken to the extreme of buying a hugging pillow (dakimakura) which she calls “daki” (rendered in the English as “Huggy”) and practices kissing it as if it were a real boy. She has even painted a picture on it in the form of her ideal boyfriend.
One day, by chance, Riko is sent by a teacher to deliver some papers to the Student Council Office and she happens to stumble upon Maki in one of her private moments, kissing her hugging pillow and acting completely out of character for her model student image. While you might think that these characters would be enemies, being so very different in their public images, they actually hit it off as friends as Riko agrees to keep Maki’s private activities secret and is pushed into becoming an official member of the student council. Her only role, however, is to help Maki with her wild fantasizing about romance, which is justified under the name of “research,” going by the title of the “Love Lab.” In time, the other members of the student council find out and join in these silly attempts to learn about getting guys’ attention and dating—the shy Secretary Suzune Tanahashi and two former members who quit but are brought back: the childish Yuiko Enomoto (former president and now vice-president) and the scheming, money-grubbing Treasurer Sayori Mizushima.
In general, there really isn’t an overarching plot to the show, though it does not wander aimlessly as it has small plot arcs that flow from one to another, with the girls facing off minor crises that threaten to reveal their secret activities to the teachers (romantic relationships are forbidden to students at Fujisaki, so the Love Labs would likely provoke the disbanding of the student council should the teachers find out). What is somewhat surprising is that except for Episode 10, which does consist largely of a series of short vignettes, this show does not feel like the material was based upon a four-panel comic. Often, the anime adaptations of such works turn out more like Azumanga Daioh or, for a more recent example, The Chronicles of the Going Home Club, which provide nothing more than short pieces of 5-7 minutes length stitched together with title cards that set up and deliver a self-contained gag, even if the better series, such as AzuDai, also create a sense of continued movement forward tying the disparate events related together. There was a much greater sense of flow to Love Lab, a positive accomplishment in my view, though it may, of course, owe much to the original manga author creating a good sense of uninterrupted flow, something not always easy with the four-panel format.
Contrary to what I’ve said, there is one little plot element that does tie together this season, and that comes from a misunderstanding at the very beginning. Maki, being rather naive, believes that Riko is popular with boys and starts calling her “Master,” seeking her guidance in affairs of the heart. Riko, being proud, can’t come out and tell the truth that while she’s had more interaction with boys than the sheltered Maki, most of the interaction was in sports and at school, and she was such a tomboy that most of the boys treated her like one and never thought of her as a girl at all, though we see that inside Riko is quite feminine and wants to be treated like a girl. In fact, one of the funniest moments in the show is later on when Riko learns from some of the boys at the cram school she attends that Maki is their ideal of what a girl should be, so Riko takes to doing an impression of Maki, copying her every pose and action, which makes Maki confused and visibly upsets Sayo (who seems to value genuineness over everything else and so Riko’s fakery just makes her sick; added into this is that Sayo is the only one who guessed the truth about Riko and thus knows how much Riko is already fooling the others, especially Maki).
The revelation of the truth provides the somewhat more serious crisis that ends the season, as Maki does eventually find out. Riko is worried that the truth will ruin her friendship with Maki and the others, and that ties into one of themes that this show may well have at its heart, unexpectedly for such a lighthearted comedy. While most of the show really is silly gags and well-executed jokes centered around the naive ideas of the girls about dating and romance (though it is revealed that Sayo actually has a boyfriend, though their relationship is, to put it mildly, unusual), on a somewhat deeper level the true theme of Love Lab is friendship and the power of friendship, as we see at the end.
I hope that we will be seeing a second season in the future.
Series Retrospective:
For a gag comedy based upon a four-panel comic, Love Lab actually has a lot of heart and even some deeper moments that bring home the importance of friendship. While most of the girls are without doubt silly caricatures whom one would never meet in reality, there’s also something to admire in the bonds that they form with each other in their pursuit of knowledge about romance. This is actually somewhat true to life, as I’m sure we can all remember being in junior high and not really knowing much about how one goes about getting the attention of someone you’ve developed a crush on, floundering around like an idiot in the vain hope of getting them to like you. So we see these girls engage in wild and crazy hijinks in an attempt to learn how to attract boys, all for our amusement (and it is amusing).
While it operates on a completely different level and through very different methods, Love Lab is probably the funniest comedy of the summer season alongside the more serious and sentimental at times Silver Spoon. What they share, however, is an ability to touch the heart and make the viewer care about the characters while at the same time hitting the funny bone and making the audience laugh not only at the characters, but with the characters.
Series Grade: A-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
and here I thought this anime is yuri 🙁