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Perhaps it’s because this season has been terrible so far. Perhaps it’s because I watched this after the trio of Ace of Diamond, Walkure Romanze and that pornographic girls wrestling anime. Perhaps it’s because I was actually gay all along and what I needed was my very specific fetish of men in glasses standing in front of polka dotted skies to be pandered to in order to step out of the closest. Whatever the reason, I really quite enjoyed Glasses Club. Or as the background music calls it ME~GA~NE~BUU UUUUU.
I think the primary reason is the style. It’s Shaft by means of Trapeze and Baka to Test, and it’s a style I’ve always liked. It’s a style many people track back to Osamu Dezaki. Both Akiyuki Shinbo, the Shaft guy, and Kunihiko Ikuhara, the Utena and Penguindrum director, say Dezaki’s style had a huge influence on the way they direct. The difference with Shinbo and Ikuhara is they play with spacial features and colour that plays with the idea that this is even existing in reality. It’s an idea I’ve always liked because it allows you to play with the setting and make it more visually striking to highlight different parts of the screen. Animation is not live-action, and the more directors that realise this and play with what animation can achieve, the better off we are.
Not that Glasses Club uses this directing style to its full effect because to do that you would need to have a story. Or themes. Or anything beyond a bunch of guys just fucking about. The directing style gives the series this great flow to events. It allows punchlines to be snappy and move the narrative along without making the flow feel awkward. The staff are fairly obviously not working under much of a budget since there’s limited movement on display. But based on first episode alone this was already 50 times more visually entertaining and striking than Free ever was. Also these guys, unlike the guys in Free, actually have nipples. I know, real nipples. On their chests. Phwoar!
Content-wise, Glasses Club is stupid. It does know it’s stupid and plays to the jokes without even the slightest attempts at bringing in drama, which means it does work. Its jokes do work a surprisingly large amount of the time. Between the mecha glasses dream, stripping to get more streamlined, and cream puffs talking about how awkward it is ordering for cream puffs in English to delay the optician, it made me grin without necessarily making the laugh. It has no weight or satire to the humour the same way things like Watamote or Daily Lives of Highschool Boys has, which means I can’t see its appeal lasting much longer. But for what it’s worth, I would love to see more anime from this director. Between her and the new guy who directed Sankarea, Studio Deen suddenly have some talented staff. What is the world coming to.
The Cart Driver 
I don’t remember Baka to Testo being this unanimated. As in, Meganebu is a bunch of static images, even Shaft anime are more dynamic than this thing.
It would be not bad, entertaining even, if it wasn’t so very boring. It should be 15 or even 5 minutes long.
And about 5-minutes long anime, even Inferno Cop and Jigoku Youchien had more animation.
I probably would have enjoyed this more if the comedic pacing and timing weren’t so terrible that it killed all the humor.
I went in suspecting this show was going to be boring and terrible, so I was pleasantly surprised and actually laughed quite a bit. The sheer dedication to the glasses = life theme (arguably the only theme displayed) was impressive.
Granted I wear glasses, so perhaps I’m biased. I do wonder where the show can go from here, though.
This season really is kind of sad, isn’t it.
The glasses = life theme was more a running joke than a theme though. Funny, but that’s about it
Hmmmm… Now what about mechas with nipples?
anime would be finally saved
The first half was horrible, cliche yes but the second half of ace dia wasn’t that bad, right?
I started fast-forwarding at about the halfway point so it did improve because they talked funny
Hi Scamp.
Just wanted to let you know that I got more points than you on FAL. Yes this makes me feel better about myself. Yes I’m probably going to lose to you pretty soon though. Yes I’m going to regret posting this comment.
First week babe. Just you wait and see, first week is never important.
I was fully expecting this show to be embarassingly terrible. It’s amazing what oversaturated colors and upbeat music will do for ya.
I’d also like to add the guy who did the second season of Nurarihyon no Mago to the list of potentially-awesome directors at DEEN. He actually managed to incorporate some lovely dark imagery and effective tension in the half of the series he had control over (the first season was glacial in its pacing and had all the visual excitement of a salt flat).
I remember liking the first ending to Nurarara. That’s all I can remember about that show
i also wear glasses so this anime made my week.
This is my first anime this season – I picked it with a randomizer after downloading everything.
I couldn’t have asked for a better start, this was so awesome! Exactly the kind of energy and liveliness I love in anime.
Honestly I’m in a similar mindset: it’s basically one of the best, if not the best, thing so far this season. Sure it was barely animated but it was obvious when they tried to animate they weren’t very good at that, the director just pulled all the shaft moves to work around actually animating.
You know what? This is one of those few animes where they realise what makes it FUN to watch. It doesn’t need some tacked on crappy drama to accompany it like much else is opting for.
Calm down there a second. The best? Kill la Kill stomps this in every department. The two are trading in pretty similar appeal, but Kill la Kill goes waaaaaaaay further than anything this down
Scamp is confirmed fujioshi!!!! Now go crossdress and wear a wig. Do feminine voice training too while your at it!
Anyways that background sure is lol worthy “All you need is M-E-G-A-N-E!!!” in glorious english. Japanese sure is really funny when they make fun of the english language. I wish there’s a lot more anime with that. But still I’m not really convinced that it would be that great since it somehow is way too focused on the glasses part that it might become a repetitive joke. Hopefully though they might introduce something new with this theme
Also there’s seems to be no one blogging about White Album 2? Well too bad I guess
I saw the first episode of White Album 2 and thought it was awful. Don’t really have enough to say about it though to do a first impressions
I actually liked it though. But oh well opinions
ME~GA~NE~BOOOOOO! (Even though I’m wearing glasses myself :P)
EDIT: Sorry, I just had to make that bad joke because of how it seemed like they said it for me.
Hopefully this series doesn’t have any bad drama in it. Most comedy anime starts fine but then they decide to add drama that sucks away all the comedy at some point.
Also why are nipples that important to you?
Because I find it uncomfortable that anime erases body parts that it doesn’t like. It’s similar to why I find it so unerring when characters don’t have noses. It’s like they’re trying to reach this perfectly blank pink slab with giant eyes as the perfect human being and it weirds me out
this anime brought some much needed to humor to the fall 2013 anime season. how can you not laugh at these guys and their glasses obsession? its actually a pretty original idea. im curious to see where the show goes from here..
I did quite like that too. It’s not called glasses club just because they all wear glasses. It’s actually about their glasses and glasses culture in general, which is fascinating in its own weird way
it makes me want to start my OWN glasses club! it will be a very aerodynamic club, and girls are allowed haha…