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Monday, 26 September 2011 13:50 |
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Yu-ri-yu ~rarara ra~YuruYuri... Yes, it's one of the more vacuous shows from the summer season. But it's also up near the top of the list in how much fun it can be, and that's the important part, right..? Akari Akaza and her friends in junior high will take any opportunity to just goof off. And we get to watch them do it...
It's Akari Akaza's first day of middle school, and she's gotten the day off the a great start by... forgetting she even has to go to school. Fortunately, friends Kyoko and Yui are prepared for this - it's not like Akari hasn't shown airhead tendencies before. While waiting for Akari to change, though, Yui goes snooping in Akari's sister's bedroom - and finds that she may have worrying siscon tendencies. Later, one of the first things to do at a new school is choose the club you'll be joining - and with the girls wanting to do nothing more than laze around, they take over the room of the now-disbanded Tea Club and start one of their own. Welcome to the Amusement Club.
The club soon gets its first new recruit - annoyingly cute (on the outside, at least) Chinatsu, who gets pounced upon by Kyoko for her similarity to Kyoko's favourite anime character, Mirakurun. But Chinatsu's far more taken by Yui, for who her admiration soon grows to stalker levels. And then there's the student council quartet of Ayano, Chitose, Sakurako and Himawari, who each bring their own form of mayhem to the mix...
Poor Akari's most notable attribute is her lack of "presence", which means that her main appearance each episode is the callot-watch at the beginning. Awww. Kyoko is hyperactive, and a doujinshi author to boot; Chinatsu may look cute, but underneath she's decidedly evil. Ayano has it bad for TOSHINO KYOKO!! (as she always addresses her), while Chitose follows Ayano around, fantasising about her and Kyoko getting it on together - and suffering an almost permanent bloody nose as a result. And Himawari and Sakurako are clearly in denial about their own feelings for each other, and live life in a permanent tsundere state as a result. If the show's title didn't give away that there'd be (heavily implied, if not actual) girl-girl relationships here, you know now.
Insert "pandering to sad and lonely fanboys" paragraph here. And you know, I really can't argue with that sort of statement - the show does pander to what the boys want to see (in one or two scenes in a quite distasteful and worrying way that I overanalysed in a blog post). But, apart from those scenes, it does it in a lighthearted and funny way, and after a few episodes of the series I was firing up each new episode with a grin already on my face in anticipation of the fun the episode was going to have. And I was never really disappointed. The characters are all likeable, if shallow - but that's what they need to be for this sort of humour. The situations are contrived, but usually play out well and rarely drag on for too long. Laughs? Several loud ones per episode, minimum. And that's what you watch a comedy to get, right?
Yes, it's as shallow as hell. Yes, it's in bad taste in places. Yes, it's not doing anything that hasn't been done before. But I don't subscribe to the belief that every show has to do something unique - especially when we're talking about comedies. I just want my comedies to make me laugh, and YuruYuri delivered on that front better than just about any other show in the summer season. "Creative", "worthy" and "unique" I got elsewhere - and that's not a complaint. Know what the series is and tailor your expectations accordingly - you want something with depth or meaning and this isn't going to be for you, but take it for what it is and there's a lot of fun to be had with YuruYuri, and on that level it's well worth watching.
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