Seasonal Anime can get a bit hard to catch up on to every once in a while especially in a season where a lot of good shows are released just like in Fall 2019 where we saw the rapid rise to infamy of several shows like Fate/Grand order- Absolute demonic front: Babylonia another product of the ever so complicated Fate franchise and Sword art online: Alicization. Truth be told I never thought that the SAO series which is one of the most hated anime of all time can ever make such a huge comeback and look at it now, it has its loyal fan base, a huge viewer base and it’s already getting its third season which I am very excited to watch but sometimes you just wanna get away from all those actions, all those flashy animations, and serious storylines and watch something laid back and simple… And Asobi Asobase is the complete opposite of those.
Asobi Asobase is one of those shows where its content is so far away from the way that it is represented, if you saw the Thumbnail and heard the OP you get the first impression that it’s just gonna be one of those slice-of-life anime with concepts that is a carbon copy of the one before it and then when you’ve finally decided to watch it 10 minutes in you will realize just how wrong you are.
The show starts during recess in a normal all-girls high school (Of course it’s high school how could it not be? What else do you expect?) When Kasumi tried to get English lessons from Olivia, a foreign student –which is in reality both her parents are foreigners but she is born and raised in Japan making her a Japanese national. She only does this so that it is easier for her to make friends. — in exchange for teaching her Japanese past times –How good can a trade get? — it is from this game that an idea sprung. They have to make a past timers club, a club which is as useless as Aqua from Konosuba.
To be real here there is no “plot” going on around Asobi Asobase which is good since it gives you the freedom of doing anything to your show much like Doraemon and Nichijou. We get all sorts of absurd stuff from this creative freedom as you can do anything to your show and this is what makes Asobi Asobase so special it’s because the show itself is not about the story it’s about how the characters being the life and soul of the show.
Hanako Honda (CV: Hina Kino): is that one energetic friend that drags you around everywhere she goes has a weird sense of fashion and forces her friends into her weird antics a child in a woman’s body is the proper word to describe her as a lot of the trouble that the past timers club goes through is because of her, although despite having known for her childish nature she is highly intelligent when it comes to academics and sports even if she has no interest in them and is very rich. Her overreaction and high pitched screams are her trademarks as a character and I praise Hina Kino for doing such a good job of it because every time that Hanako screams it just sounds so genuine and I think that the role is perfectly played. Man, I can just imagine her looking at the script.
Olivia (CV: Rika Nagae): Olivia is the character who poses as a different person than what she already is, she likes to pretend. Olivia is a character that fakes being an American transfer student despite being born and raised in Japan with foreign parents which makes her basically Japanese so to try to keep up with this act of her she needs to speak in broken Japanese to keep her image and pretend to know a lot about English and of course, this creates a lot of problems both for her and her friends but the worst thing is that she won’t stop the act no matter the consequences.
Kasumi Nomura (Konomi Kohara): She’s that one person that is quiet and likes to keep things to herself and only opens up to few people but believe me she is by far the most normal person ON THIS SHOW even with the fact that she likes writing BL fantasies.
But of course, with every comedy show, there must be some side characters that have their distinct personalities as well as they are one of the most overlooked elements of a comedy show, they’re that splash of spice, they’re the ones that make the show more colorful and Asobi Asobase has plenty of that here are a few to mention:
- Maeda (CV: Ryotaro Okiayu)-My personal favorite, why? Do you ask? Well because this character is something like straight out of an 8-year old that likes toilet humor and I mean it. Maeda is the Hanako family’s butler his back story (According to him.) is that once he is abducted by a group of aliens which installed a butt laser, yeah you heard that right butt lazer or as I would like to call it asshole beam and then after they installed it they just left him at the park lonely, homeless, starving and thirsty. His inability to control his asshole beam caused him a lot of trouble like he can’t shit normally without destroying an entire toilet or when he farts he accidentally activates his asshole beam and scares people away and eventually led to him being scared of himself but then one day he met a man that taught him the way of controlling his asshole beam and coincidentally it was Hanako’s grandfather thus him being a butler as a way of repaying them also he can quickly build different stuff that Hanako asks for like an inflatable kiddie pool and a robot that speaks pre-programmed English that also looks like a sex doll (Yeah I know what the fuck right?). He was also the guy that gave Hanako the idea that Shogi meant shooting las — Oh sorry I meant asshole beam just because every time Hanako asks how Shogi is played he just shoots an asshole beam because it is too tiring for him to explain.
Maeda is literally one of the best things about this show.
- Tsugumi Aozora (CV: Aoi Yuuki)- She’s the type of person that goes Ara Ara and has a very dominative personality but she adds more to the overall chaos that the show offers especially at that one episode where he asked the trio to get a note called the “Banana papers” which is a log of all the incidents of the past time club and also why not add in a little bit of mystery? As she is suspected of being a boy when Olivia overheard Tsugumi a conversation and of course this leads to suspicion and the Past timers club goes to great lengths just to find the answer and she/he confuses them in return
- Oka (CV: Mai Kanazawa)- This girl suggested voodoo to heal someone… That’s it.
With this electric cast, they never fail to deliver a jam-packed episode filled with eccentric humor and gags that are one of a kind paired with top-notch voice acting that never fails to perfectly deliver their over the top jokes is something that you can call “High-quality comedy”.
My first impression on the visuals is that it is good… It is not special or anything it is just good, average type of good but as the show goes on I realized that the visuals are perfect for an anime like this the visuals are OK for normal scenes like them conversing with each other but when that big trouble is spinning and the characters are getting more and more engaged in the gag this is where the animation just sparks we can see how the visuals changes and goes to exaggerated levels, it’s kinda like Nichijou but it can be a lot weirder and sometimes… Scary
The opening… hearing it for the first time gave me the chills as I said to myself “Oh damn is this going to be on of those feel-good shows?” with their angelic voices and joyful movements paired with a relaxing melody it makes you think that this is a very easy-going anime with cute and likable characters that go on their everyday adventure with the power of friendship much like god sent angels and yeah the anime is exactly like that
except they’re demons.
As we go through each episode it becomes clearer how wrong we are as we just go along with this chaos and then, in the end, we are presented with this ED where the trio is playing HARD ROCK on their instruments along with flashy lights and a dark background… I don’t know how to describe it just go watch it for yourself.
By the time that the show ends you ask yourself “What in the fucking world have I just watched?” and deep inside you are filled with doubt and this surreal feeling of uneasiness growing inside of you but as your brain is still trying to process what just happened you just watch the second episode by impulse just because “Why not?”.
Asobi Asobase is one of those shows that you watch when you’re having a bad day or you just want to have a good laugh because no matter how weird it maybe it never fails to give you that feeling of happiness and takes away the stress of life on your shoulder for a brief moment.
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