What They Say:
College students Fubuki, Rin, Mafuyu, and Nayuta all aspire to become comedians, training between school and part-time jobs. With the idea that “laughter makes people happy, and if everyone’s happy, I’m happy”, they look towards a future where they’re on stage at the famed Nanba Grand Kagetsu Hall. But that future is a ways away: for now, they’ll start with Shibuya as their main stage.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Maesetsu! Opening Act -hereafter Maesetsu– is a AXsiZ and Studio Gokumi production, with Nobuta Yuu (Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear) serving as the series Director. Additional staff include Machida Touko (GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class) on Series Composition, Matsumoto Hiroki (A-Channel) as the Art Director, and three folks on Script: Itou Joe (Nichijou, Haruhi Suzumiya), newcomer Goto Shota, and once more, Machida Touko.
Excitingly, original character design is being handled by Yoshimizu Kagami, an individual best known as the creator of Lucky Star, which is one of the most famous anime from the 2000s era. Not only do the characters resemble Yoshimizu’s hit manga and anime, but they also reference it too in a joke that…falls flat until it doesn’t.
More on that later.
Maesetsu is, at base, a show that’s aiming to be funny. However, comedy is incredibly subjective: that’s doubly sure for Masetsu, a show that’s steeped in comedy. Maesetsu is the kind of show that you’ll wind up feeling one of two ways about: either you’ll laugh and find it charming, or you won’t and will drop this sometime during episode 1. There’s almost no wiggle room, and it’s hard to imagine a viewer who fence-sits on if this show is good or not. I get the feeling that most fans with either see the potential here, or just…close the tab and find something else to watch.
So, how did I feel? Read on and find out.
Maesetsu opens in media res at Shoko-Yono High School’s 72nd Culture Festival: specifically, it opens in the gym of the stage, where amateur comedy groups Tokonatsu and RDeco take the stage in red tracksuit jackets. The gym goes silent, and with the click of a pair of drumsticks, the quartet start playing air-instruments to the very catchy OP, which features the four central voice actresses singing a positively upbeat tune.
The act goes over really, really well: the students are hyped, and cries of “Encore, encore!” And for a moment, it kind of looks like they’re setting up for a second song: the timing of the scene leads you to anticipate that. Then Mafuyu, our redheaded protagonist, decides it’s time for some impressions.
And boy howdy, do you feel that proverbial record scratch hard.
The impression Mafuyu goes for is one that Lucky Star fans will instantly recognize: Izumi Konata doing her classic impression of Crayon Shin-chan’s titular character. In Lucky Star, this is pretty well executed: Konata does a short impression, and then the scene cuts to another vignette. While viewers outside of Japan probably didn’t get the Shin-chan reference at the time, Konata’s funny enough that you kind of just go with it, regardless of personal understanding, or even knowledge about who Shin-chan is.
However, Mafuyu mixes it up by doing a layered impress: Konata doing an impression of Shin-chan…getting on a train in Tokyo.
Yes, you read that right.
Mafuyu’s impression…is an absolute flop. No one laughs: no one even coughs. It goes over as well as you think, and unfortunately, is only funny because Mafuyu’s joke is so distinctly unfunny. It almost feels bad to laugh because you’re really laughing at her, but like…the scene is so painfully unfunny that you can’t help but giggle anxiously.
Thankfully, soon after, the real stars of the festival take the stage: school alumni -and popular comedies- JK Cool, featuring Kusaba Eru and Waraino Arashi. Tonokatsu and RDeco head backstage, leaving Mafuyu’s impression behind them, which is probably where it belongs.
This is one of the central struggles that Maesetsu has in this first episode: it keeps trying to be funny, and often, Mafuyu -the central character- just isn’t. But honestly… that’s kind of where the heart of the show is: after all, Mafuyu and her friends aren’t professionals. They’re nineteen-year-old kids who are just getting started on working hard for their dreams. If anything, it’s nice that they’re not instantly funny: it gives the show room to grow, which is why I’ve found myself eager for episode 2.
That’s not to say that the show itself isn’t funny: in fact, there are lots of little funny things, especially when the girls are gathered together, and in the end, Mafuyu’s gag gets some development. We get a solid backstory on when she started doing her impression, and by the end of this episode, it’s actually kind of funny, partially because Mafuyu just puts so much effort into performing the gag. It starts to feel like you’re laughing with her rather than at her.
It leaves you wanting to see her perform that Konata as Shin-chan gag just once more, maybe when she’s a bit more experienced: I get the feeling it’ll be funny in episode twelve. In fact, I really hope it is.
One other thing that I struggled with was comparing this to Lucky Star, which is a personal favorite of mine. In my mind, the moment I heard Izumi Konata and realized that Yoshimizu Kagami had a hand in things, I was hoping for a modern version of Lucky Star. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
But that isn’t bad.
After a day of mulling things over, I realized I don’t want a new iteration of Lucky Star: it’s very of its time, and while it’s still intensely funny, doesn’t necessarily need to be repeated. After all, part of what made Lucky Star so funny was the era it was created in. It was highly referential and pulled from the media of the time. That’s part of why Lucky Star is still one of my favorite series, thirteen years later.
Realistically, Maesetsu can’t -and shouldn’t- replicate that: not without being focused on otaku culture, like Yoshimizu’s other work. Maesetsu’s focus is comedy and daily life, and honestly, the further it shifts away from Lucky Star, the better. My hope is that by the end of the series, the only reference to Lucky Star is the art style.
I’d like to see Maesetsu do what I hope this first episode hinted at: show a group of girls honing their skills as amateur comedians while having fun with each other. That’s the kind of relaxing, mindless slice of life comedy I could easily see myself watching the rest of the Fall 2020 anime season.
In Summary:
Maesetsu! Opening Act combines early 2000’s comedy vibes with late 2010’s animation into a fairly entertaining show with room to grow. While it won’t be the Lucky Star of the 2020s, it’s still a charming series about four college students trying to achieve their dreams as comedians, all while finding their stride as young women who are still trying to be adults. However, it’s still got a long way to go before it leaves anyone in stitches.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Funimation
