What They Say:
A group of suspicious characters begin to hound Kazama. As luck would have it, they’re the real Game Creation Club and he got duped into joining the fake Game Creation Club! Why does his school have two of the same club, anyway?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The opening episode of D-Frag! was a good bit of fun as we saw how Kazama was tricked and coerced into becoming a member of the Game Creation Club so that they got to keep their status and funding. It was silly, comical and slapstick as it went on with classic pratfalls and the like being well executed. It didn’t exactly do a strong job for me in defining any of the characters outside of Kazama, who himself is paper thin anyway, but this isn’t a series where really getting to know the characters seems like it will help it a lot. We’re working with stereotypes here and having fun with it, which works well in general with this kind of format. It’s about the quick bits and the comedy itself, such as having masked and hooded characters surround Kazama outside the school and just totally mess with him in a fun if creepy way.
Amusingly, this group claims to be the real Game Creation Club and tries to convince Kazame to leave the one he joined, the fake one, and join theirs instead. It’s a comical group right from the start as the girls aren’t exactly the best at handling situations like this and you can see Kazama just tiring of it all kind of quickly, especially since he didn’t want to join the other club to begin with, never mind there being this kind of confusion thrown into the mix. It ends up running all over the place and just gets louder and flails more as it progresses, which does work to some degree in just being fun to watch as it settles things out.
The second half gets us back to the club itself with Kazama in it as the group is talking about what to do with the upcoming festival and what kind of game to create for it, which actually surprises Kazama since he figured they didn’t really do much. This brings the conflict of the two groups into the forefront since the girl from the other club comes to accuse the Game Creation Club of being the problem and we see how one of them has a long standing issue with Roka, which caused the split in the end. Takao isn’t a bad character as we see her from her calmer days, but it’s the kind of issue where we see how some people just can’t handle a different person like Roka and her ways and it can cause some serious rifts and problems as it goes on. Can it all be solved with just a little bit of talking between everyone with Kazama as a mediator? That would kill some of the comical tension of the series, so you can guess how it all plays out.
In Summary:
D-Frag hits some fun notes here as it goes along and we see how the Game Creation Club split along the way and the animosity that exists for some of them because of it. Which is pretty natural considering some of the issues at hand. Similar to the first episode, things get out of hand easily and go in silly yet fun directions, keeping it a show that moves quickly and doesn’t slow down too far. It knows when to go for the dialogue and to do a bit of exposition as we get a touch of Takao’s past and how it was impacted by Roka. That helps to move the narrative along, even if it was all predictable and expected. At the end, the show is one that is light and fun but will proceed along without any real depth or meat to it. If it can keep amusing, it’ll work out nicely as a simple comedy whose characters aren’t rich or deep but hit all the right marks.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: FUNimation
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.
