Common Name: Yuyushiki
Score: 6/10, 5/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life, School Life, Yuri
Summary: Yui, Yuzuko, and Yukari are three high school friends that have grown so close that they feel perfectly comfortable with each other's quirky personalities. Always looking for more time to hang out and have fun together, this trio comes across the opportunity to do just that as they come across the room of the defunct Data Processing Club. Though the space is a bit cramped, it's perfect for their purposes. Now they can just hang out after school with good reason and learn some new, interesting things using the club room's computers.
Review: Given the prolific nature of slice of life comedies focused on high school girls, it figures that most shows these days would go for the gimmick approach to keep old jokes and characters fresh season after season. Umamusume, Gabriel Drop-out, Yuru Camp, and Hinako Note are just a few of the classic examples of this practice that come to mind. So, on the weird inverse of that coin, there are so many gimmick shows these days that it feels weirdly novel to run into a relatively normal title where the only gimmick of note is that the girls occasionally Wiki random things they think of in the moment, like any bored high schooler with a computer is bound to do.
Granted, I suppose the yuri overtones could be called a gimmick. Let's be honest, though,
yuri overtones are a staple of the genre at this point.
Now, to be clear, I love this show to pieces. I have no illusions, though, that my love isn't built purely from my bias for these kinds of quiet, thoughtful, and down-to-earth shows that feel more about the people than they are the jokes themselves. Where other shows build entire episodes on a gag or series of stock character interactions that are formulated to be hilarious, Yuyushiki takes more of the Lucky Star approach to its comedy. There's no drama here. There are no driving character dilemmas. The whole point of this show is to just sit back and watch a group of weirdo friends do weird things together because they're friends. While that might sound boring to watch and is crippling in a critical sense due to a lack of ambition, I still found myself engaged by these characters and their semi-believable conversations that make up the bulk of the show's comedy.
Relatability is at an all-time high.
On top that, though, I think the main reason I love this show is because, like Acchi Kocchi, the entire show works to encapsulate a single idea or belief. In this case, the concept that every facet of this show works to express is that classic phrase, "If I'm weird around you, it's because I'm comfortable." From the show's characters to their conversations and personalities around each other and other people, everything about this show works to express their comfort and how that level of comfort can change given enough time and the connections. What best expresses this fact isn't so much the main cast, though, so much as the show's secondary characters initial, non-hostile reaction to the main cast, recognizing them as a bunch of weirdos. As time goes on, however, individual members of this group slowly begin to make friends with the main cast over the littlest things. On and on this grows until, once we as the audience have known them long enough, the show outright reveals that this secondary trio had their own brand of weirdness all along; we just never got to see it since we weren't focused on them.
It personally found it hilarious how the supporting cast basically amounted
to being slightly toned-down clones of the main cast.
Of course, it goes without saying that this narrative through line can be applied to the main cast as well. Though little about them actually changes over the course of the series, the main cast seems to function as constant representations of how people can slip into being comfortably weird with other people. Ichii Yui, the show's primary lead, for example, spends a good portion of the show as the straight man of her trio and the peacekeeper when things get taken a bit too far and need to be reigned in. In other words, she's defined primarily by her being different from her friends and her frustration when she gets swept into things against her will. As time goes on, however, something closer to her real feelings start to ekes out. In her quieter moments, Yui admits that, in spite of all her complaints and threats of physical violence, she actually enjoys all the stupid stuff she and her friends get into but is too bashful to admit that fact to them. So, as long as she doesn't let her insecurities get to her too much, she's more than happy to get towed along for the ride.
It's not hard to see why Yuzuko and Yukari are absolutely smitten with her.
Standing in as the actual face of the show, Nonohara Yuzuko (Yuzu), is pretty much the personification of this show's narrative through line. Where Yui is relatively straightforward and can be boiled down to an easily manipulated tsundere, Yuzu is functionally the catalyst of all things weird in their friend group. When things get taken a little too far, she's usually the cause. Yet, in spite of that, she's occasionally depicted as being a lot more chill and smart than her personality lets on. Beneath all the crazy, Yuzu is actually a good student and considerate friend who wants nothing more than to get and give the laughs. What makes this easy for her is the simple fact that Yui makes for a fantastic target for some friendly bullying. So, when she starts to think up a joke or prank, she'll get too excited and end up going above and beyond what might be considered socially appropriate, which leads to tons of laughs and a lot of her getting punished for going too far.
Yui is, by all rights, a bad influence on the girls, but since
she's ultimately harmless there's no need to worry.
Lastly, Hinata Yukari exists as something of a middle ground in this friendship. Like Yui, Yukari is more of a laid-back personality, due in large part to her privileged upbringing. Like Yuzu, however, she has a penchant for mischief and ends up getting swept up in whatever plan Yuzu has concocted to push Yui's buttons, which obviously ends with Yui getting her karmatic justice. In many ways, Yukari is like a slightly warped mirror that reflects the attitudes of those she's focused on while shades her own ojou-sama can still be seen. As the show notes, when this friendship was just Yui and Yukari, she was as sweet and innocent as could be. As soon as Yuzu entered the mix, though, their cutesy duo became an infamously mischievous trio as Yukari started to pick up and agree with Yuzu's desire to watch the bashful Yui squirm and fight against their playful prodding.
Granted, they also agree that they love Yui for more than just her reactions, so it all works out.
Where the lines start to come a little blurred with this show is how far this comfort extends. The girls are happy and playful and undoubtedly love each other. The extent to which that love reaches though is a bit of a question and one that's unfortunately typical of anime in general, let along this genre. At times it's hard to tell how earnest Yuzu and Yukari are being when they tease each other and Yui with claims of wanting to see her naked or, I kid you not, to flick "Yui's bean," but it fairly hard to outright ignore such extreme and blatantly sexual advances. At the end of the day, though, this show remains fairly innocuous on that point and many others in that same vein. All that matters is that these girls are friends who have a blast getting into trouble together and learning new things along the way whenever they run into something they don't know. And, on the whole, it does a fairly good job portraying that simple fact. The art isn't necessarily unique or interesting but it helps to convey the generally bubbly feel of the show at large. Beyond that, there's very little to note with this show artistically. The OST is appropriately toned but barely there. The animation is about what you'd expect from a budget slice of life series. In truth, Yuyushiki is fairly mediocre in every respect excluding its efforts to adhere to its narrative theme of comfortable friendship. Even that's not a particularly ambitious theme, though, so I'm left with saying that this show is just "OK." It's not bad but it's not particularly great either. It's just cotton candy fluff with an interesting flavor that I both enjoy and wouldn't mind a second helping of once I get the craving for it again.
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