Wherein it asks the question, “What Kind of Place Is a Mental Clinic?”
What They Say:
Have issues with depression, erectile dysfunction, dementia, or even with your love life? Don’t worry, as the psychologist Ryo and his nurse Asuna will seriously try to help you understand these mental disorders all while laughing in this comedy anime!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the series having told folks to visit a mental clinic just once or twice over the course of its run, something Asuna talks about at the start here as she obsessively polishes the camera, it makes sense to actually show what one is like. As has been said before, removing the stigma of something helps to make it easier to actually deal with for a lot of people, so walking folks through the process definitely helps with what to expect. It’s all played straight and works the educational side well, though I’ll admit with my heavy hentai background, I kept seeing all the ways this could go horribly wrong.
Naturally, the second half has Asuna crying foul on what Ryo was showing there with it since it was joke free. Her crying foul has her beating up pretty hard on him and then going into a not-typical clinic as an old style play/game show. This lets it go over the top in silliness with the different kinds of clinics there may be, such as bondage based and more. There’s some really silly stuff that goes on here with a lot of quick hit gags and jokes, a lot of callbacks to earlier parts of the series, and just fun in having so much of the cast back in play for at least a minute or two. Suffice to say, while you may want to visit a non-typical clinic like they show here from time to time, you’re mostly glad it’s never like this.
In Summary:
The series draws to a close with this episode and it’s certainly one of those kinds of episodes where it does what it does best. It provides the actual legitimate information first to help destigmatize the idea of visiting a mental clinic to get help. Then it goes and just plays itself silly by showing all kinds of wacky ideas of what a mental health clinic could be like. It’s silly and over the top, but honestly not so outrageously so that it would be problematic in the context to the show. The series is one that did some good stuff in tackling a variety of subjects and making them accessible, educational but also funny with what they did. It did tend to play a bit more to the perverse side of things, which can be divisive, but there’s something to be said for stretching things in that way to ease the ideas a bit. This is an unusual series and one that just may have helped some folks in some small way.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
