Based on the manga series by Tomoya Haruno that began in 2008, D-Frag! Is a twelve-episode series from Brain’s Base directed by Seiki Sugawara. The seinen manga series has been serialized in the Media Factory magazine Monthly Comic Alive and has nineteen volumes out and is still ongoing in 2025. The manga has also been solidly released in English by Seven Seas Entertainment as they get a new volume out each year just a bit behind the Japanese releases. The anime itself is one that definitely knew how to market itself when it first aired and it was one of the few simulcasts I made time for when it came out. I enjoyed it for the most part since it played well with fanservice and silliness, but it also was one that didn’t work too well in the weekly grind format for me. To my surprise, when I got to marathon it some time later with a home video release it ended up being a lot more enjoyable than I expected and I think I came out of the season a lot more enthused than I was during the simulcast.
The concept behind the show is pretty simple as it involves a high school group of kids who are part of the Game Creation Club. The club is facing its greatest challenge yet in that it’s about to lose its status as a club because they haven’t really done anything noteworthy. So they have the struggle of finding a new member since the deadline is today and they’ll be out of luck otherwise. What luck falls into their laps, in an awkward way of course, is one of the small group of “delinquent” students named Kazama who is trying to conquer the world with his fists but is finding that the school is just too well balanced and happy of a place to really be dealt with in this way. He wants to be the bad guy, but he gets involved in the club by doing something good as he races to help out when he thinks there’s a fire there as opposed to the illusion that they’re running. Before he and his associates know it, they’ve been friended and amusingly conquered by the all-girls club members that are there.
This encounter gets the club president, the pint-sized Roka, to push Kazama into becoming a member. And not in a friendly way as it’s all quite threatening and dark as she kidnaps him, which plays against her small and cute nature for bigger laughs. That gets Kazama trapped into joining the club, though he has thoughts of ways out of it before discovering that they’ve truly got him cornered into it. Not surprisingly, he has to start coping with the diverse personalities of the club – and an advisor who looks about the same age as a lot of them – while hoping to find his way out of it. There’s some good slapstick action that runs through it and a lot of verbal back and forth as well that goes on which is comical since we get the delinquent side trying to find an out for him while the girls in the club are likely more violent and dangerous than they are. It’s a cute dynamic that, with some time and exploration of who the characters are beyond the archetypes here, could lead to some good humor and situations.
Though things tend to revolve around a primary group of characters, later on in the season we’re introduced to a new character to alter the dynamic as Hachi Siou is brought in. He’s one of those son of a wealthy conglomerate character who has a huge love for Roka and views it as his lifelong mission to pursue her to bring their relationship to fruition. He’s kind of soft and odd in a way with how he presents himself but he’s also popping up at odd times to throw off Roka. When he ends up meeting Kazama amid an attempt to get closer to Roka, he starts to talk to Kazama, and that allows him to reveal his back story of how he ended up falling for Roka more than anyone else. It’s simplistic but also the kind of thing that definitely makes sense for the simple mind that is presented for him here. The whole thing just turns worse though when after spending some time with Roka and Kazama, he declares that the three are now in a love triangle. You have to feel bad for just about everyone involved at that point.
Another character that enters the picture later on to very good effect is when Noe arrives at the Game Creation Club (Provisional) itself as she’s intent on finding out what’s going on there that’s taking up so much of her brother’s time. Kazama isn’t one that you’d think would end up in this club, which was half the early gag for the show, and bringing his sister into play here definitely works as she tries to understand the club members when he’s not around. Amusingly, the club members are far more interesting in the fact that she has the same hair color as him and the hair is just as hard as his is, something that has made for some fun gags earlier in the show. With all the girls together and Noe getting caught pin their quirks, it definitely makes for some laughs, especially when Takao has to cover the reason she and Kazama were in line together before anyone figures out there may be a bigger reason.
There are a lot of standalone pieces of silliness along the way for this series that works well as it expands the relationships – even if I don’t see Roka as being right for Kazama in comparison to Takao. When the series moves into its end arc, it does get a little more serious, but not in the dark way some comedies do. The series has brought in a few new senior class characters, something it didn’t really need to do so quickly, and it’s worked with some decent physical humor and other gags along the way that hit the right mark as they kidnap Kazama in order to establish that even as outgoing student council members, they’re memorable and superior. I especially loved the whole Princess Pinch joke that really does define Kazama in so many ways. But the main thrust of recent events have revolved around the issues with Tama and Chitose, a struggle that goes back to their childhood. Which, thankfully, we see in very cute form here early on with a playground fight that comes into play between the two.
It’s been close to a decade since I last rewatched this series before this anniversary and I’m still amused at how much my opinion turned between the simulcast and doing a full binge. Not all shows work in either format and finding out which way works for you can be important. The later viewings proved to be a lot more amusing, the character interactions and arcs a bit cleaner and more engaging, and the tone of the show overall just hit a better spot. There are series where the weekly side works against it, but it’s rare for comedies like this to feel like that since marathoning a comedy can be too much of a good thing. D-Frag! definitely has its own style and intention with what it wants to do, but it doesn’t stray too far from reality. It has fun and pokes itself and others in a cute way, and it goes beyond reality in several ways, but not so outlandish that you just roll your eyes at it. This release comes together very well and is a really solid package all around. There are some elements since it does play with game creation at times that may be a bit dated, but the core of the high school club concept is where the focus should be and that still hits all the right notes a decade later, providing to be a fun property that has had a long life after the anime ended with the original manga to keep going with.
