review provided by Katie and Andrew

Title: Student Council’s Discretion Blu-ray Season 1 Complete Collection

Director: Takuya Sato

Studio: Studio Deen

Author: Jukki Hanada

U.S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks, Section 23

U.S. Release Date: March 24, 2015

Format and Length: Blu-ray / 12 Episodes / 300 Minutes

Genre: Comedy, Parody, School, Harem

Industry Age Rating: 14 and up

Overall Personal Rating: B-

Other Titles to Check Out: Lucky Star, Ebiten, Haganai, Haganai Next, and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

“Mukyu.”

Synopsis:

At Hekiyo Academy, the Student Council members are elected via the usual popularity contests, and since most teenagers think more with hormones than brains, those seats are filled by the school’s most beautiful girls. But one student is chosen based on academic scores. Besides being the council’s only male member, one of Ken Sugisaki’s main assignments is writing stories informing the student body what the student council actually does. To do that he’ll have to manipulate the truth just a bit, and given that Ken’s an obsessive fan of dating sims who fantasizes about his fellow council members as his “harem”, things tend to get even more out of hand. Plus, exactly who’s going to be the leading lady is up for debate, as immature Kurimu, tomboyish Minatsu, twisted Chizuru, and “boy’s love” obsessed Mafuyu are all trying to add their own particular spins to everything. If that’s not enough, the journalism club has it out for all of them.

Commentary:

Dragging the otaku culture, kicking and screaming the whole way, Student Council’s Discretion Blu-ray Season 1 Complete Collection, brings more anime memes and parodies than you can possible count. Just in the opening sequence of the first episode, they have over ten references before they show the opening. With some touching on the obscure, they can make things a bit difficult, so it does help to know what they are referencing for a lot of it to make any sense. This series will probably be more entertaining to those who are familiar with otaku culture.

Student Council’s Discretion Blu-ray Season 1 Complete Collection follows Ken Sugisaki and the rest of the student council (aka harem) on their daily activities of conducting the student government. That just sounds like some fun stuff doesn’t it? The catch is that they really don’t do anything meaningful, often each doing their own thing, as the meetings hardly go as planned, if even planned at all. The Student council president, Kurimu Sakurano, the resident loli, leads in the randomness with sheer determination and cuteness. Ken Sugisaki, Vice President, has one thing on his mind and being a teenage male, you can easily imagine what that is. So what is this series about? Nothing really. No, seriously. It’s episodic and random. It’s very Seinfeldish, if you will. No central plot, or conceptual story line, loveable characters that are a bit cliché, and random humor, that is sometimes a little misplaced. On a few occasions their jokes did fall flat, but that was mostly on the more obscure references they made. At those times, it felt like I was with a group of people that I had never met and they had a lot of inside jokes, that you had to of been for a while there to get.

The characters were developed a bit, but since they are all standard archetypes, everyone quickly fell into those clichés and not much development was done beyond that. At some point, they even made it a butt of some of the jokes. Another thing that seemed odd is in the first half of the series, you could count on one hand how many locations they interacted in. By the end you probably had to use both hands, so the scenery did not change often. Considering that humor was the main concept, background scenery was also not built up or changed often. The background was decently detailed, and the club room seemed to have a lot going on in it. They had to fill the space with something I suppose. The opening theme was a bit catchy, and the ending theme was ok. Background music was non-existent. The focus was mostly on the humor, and it did not detract from the series.

Extras:

Student Council’s Discretion included clean opening and closing animations and Sentai Filmworks trailers as special features. This series was released with Japanese with English Subtitles as the only language option.

Overall Grade: B-

This series is not for those who are new to anime, or those who have to have a completely coherent story from beginning to end. It’s not there. I found it easiest to watch a couple at a time, as watching too many episodes at once got tiring and I would lose interest. Enjoy it for what it is. Overall it was a decent series, if you are watching it for the parody and humor.