Title: Seitokai Yakuindomo: Complete Collection on Blu-ray
Director: Hiromitsu Kanazawa
Original Work: Tozen Ujiie
U. S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks
U. S. Release Date: 12/10/19
Format: Blu-ray / 2 seasons plus movie on 5 discs / 26 Episodes / 710 Minutes
Genre: Fan Service Comedy
Age Rating: TV MA
Overall Personal Rating: A-
Synopsis:
Takatoshi Tsuda begins his first year in high school, choosing a campus convenient to his house. Ah, but what is different is that Ousai Private Academy was an all girls’ school and this was the first year for it to go co-ed. That made him an extreme minority – I’m talking 28 guys to more than 500 girls. Awesome for him, right? Uh no, the reality is not what he expected with Student Council President Shino Amakusa. She installs him in student council without giving him or anyone choice. But that’s just the beginning of her “defined” personality. She, along with other council members, the faculty advisor and other students are constantly making nearly everything about sex, and basically blaming him as a guy, representing all masculinity.
The school years progress through Season 1 and 2 of the series. All the regular high school issues and events happen ( yes it includes a trip to the beach) but everything is always sexually charged with the female characters. All innocent statements are subject to immediate, sometimes graphic, misinterpretation. Responses are frequently perverted.
Commentary:
It is a high school based anime, but high school is not what Seitokai Yakuindomo is about. This is a comedy that relies on what is avoided in polite society as its material. Not much is out of bounds. The main focus is indeed sexual humor… all the way. And, by using female characters, whether from being naive or perverted, it is somehow funnier or not crossing “the line”.
The humor never ended. Oh, sure, it maybe used puns more than once, but twisted them differently. I found that I didn’t like watching more than 2 episodes at a time, it began to feel tedious after that. So, spacing it out worked better for me.
The jokes and innuendos are both spoken and visual. They ranged from subtle to blatant. Even if you see the punchline coming, it was still funny, like you wrote that one yourself.
Sometimes there is a story line going on in an episode, and it will probably come up in a later episode. Many times there are short bits of scenes strung together that don’t really need to be in linear time. To me, this feels like the four panel comic that was the initial beginning of the source material for the anime.
The characters were good, well scripted for the material. Takatoshi Tsuda had to be the fall guy in the jokes, but he wasn’t a caricature, too often a guy character in a harem style situation is super goofy. He was a nice normal guy with lots of tolerance, a good work ethic and a strong ability to just let things go. The other characters of note were all female, and the humor came from them being naive, extra scientific, mischievously perverted… well, there were all sorts of ways. Shine Amakusa as Student Council president took the lead but we could see peeks into her character that made her likable. She was the aggressive comedic that drove the intent of the anime. It couldn’t be done without her.
The movie just seemed like a long episode, sometimes faster paced, some linear story but also the shorts mixed in. It gave a bit of closure to the series with some students graduating but that was nearly secondary. It’s still all about the humorous innuendos.
The set contains Japanese audio and with English subtitles.
I really didn’t intend any puns or innuendos in this review, but it was funny after reading it and having the show on my mind, what things may sound like, but here it is anyway.
Overall Grade: A-
I think what Seitokai Yakuindomo set out to do was achieved very well.
