Warning: There will be a copious amount of taking my comedy anime seriously in this post. People frequently berate me for taking comedy too seriously because they think that by doing so, you stop finding it funny, a notion I disagree with. This post is a way to counter those claims, explaining why I think Daily Lives of Highschool Boys is funny compared to the likes of Nichijou or Kill Me Baby or other comedy anime that haven’t sat well with me in the past.

Daily Lives of Highschool Boys is a satire of anime’s depiction of highschool life in anime. The entire name and set up is a direct reference to the glut of anime about a bunch of girls doing cute shit in highschool, although it frequently jumps into referencing romance anime or other dude wish fulfilment stuff. From the very direct referencing of K-ON to the highlighting that boys ‘are only any use in sports or battle anime’, it’s constantly lampshading this genre. But what makes it better than most anime’s attempts at parody is it’s not a ‘playful parody’. It’s not doing the exact same thing these other anime are doing except pointing to itself occasionally and shouting ‘look at me, I’m doing this thing that other anime does, aren’t I cool’. It mocks these aspects and satirises them, and through its depiction highlights what makes them ridiculous or dumb.

Take the show’s seemingly most popular segment, Literature Girl. The characters start to spout lines about the weather is, except in poetic ways to indicate their feelings at the time. But instead of leaving it at that, which is what many self-serious romance anime do, it provides a running commentary track with the male character constantly berating his own attempts to sound cool, and in turn laughing at the girl’s own attempts to fulfil this ideal romantic scene she’s seen in romance stories. It’s also satirised it from the girl’s side too, a character whose own attempts to put herself into these idealistic romantic situations turn her into this raving mad girl whose desperation to fulfil these checklists from her fanfiction only serve to drag her further down in the eyes of the male love interest of her choice.

Another area of choice Nichibros mocks other anime is the depiction of girls. Instead of cutesy ideal girlfriends, the women in this series are how highschool boys in real life feel girls are like. They’re scary monstrous beings, completely incomprehensible, whose only aim is to jam more suffering onto the lives of the boys. The depiction is no less realistic than the hyper cutesy versions of other anime (although many of the women I follow on twitter seemed to find this less-celebratory depiction more realistic), the fact that they go all out with this depiction of girls as universally horrible is a large part of the reason I respect its devotion to satire. This all comes to a head in the Highschool Girls Are Funky segments, which takes a group of girls starting scenarios the exact same way the girls in something like K-ON does, but go in completely different directions due to how horrible they all are. The first segment in particular stands out, for one girl asks what they are going to do today, followed by another girl yelling at her and punching her in the face. Completely fucking ridiculous, but its direct contrast and reference to K-ON and its ilk frames the scene and uses this contrast to highlight how ridiculous the insufferably nice versions of highschool girls are.

And so on and so forth, the show satirises so many various aspects of how unrealistic the depictions of highschool life is. Sometimes it’s just through placing this scenes in more realistic settings, such as the above literature girl segment, or how the boys try to act out scenes from their favourite RPGs but completely lose the sense of the plot. There’s satirising through exaggeration, such as the depiction of girls or the very opening segment where the main character leaves house with a piece of toast in his mouth, followed by his friends eating bowls of ramen. There’s a few ones that defy classification, such as the depiction of sisters. They’re not desirable love toys. Rather, they’re inhuman creatures that you’ve spent so much time around that you don’t even consider them as girls anymore. They’re referred to solely as “X’s imouto” and are never shown to have any eyes.

Again I could go on, but all I’d be doing is continuing to spoil the various jokes in the anime. What I’m trying to say is that Daily Lives of Highschool Boys is a satire of modern anime’s depiction of highschool and how this can warp the expectations of teenagers for how this life is supposed to run. When viewed through this filter, every joke in the series takes on a new light. It’s not the actual daily lives of highschool boys. It’s the daily lives of highschool boys as viewed through the filter of how anime thinks their lives should go.

On a personal note, I had pegged this show completely incorrectly in my season preview. I probably shouldn’t have, what with the director being the same guy who did School Rumble and Gintama. But a season before this we got Kimi to Boku. It was an unusual idea, having cute boys doing cute things rather than girls. But the end result was the exact bloody same. You could have swapped those genders around and got the exact same shit we have been getting for the past few years, except now seen through a more shoujo-y filter. It made me depressed. I love anime because of how it can take totally crazy ideas and animate them to make wonderful stories no other medium would even dare to try approach. Yet we were living in an era where it was becoming commonplace to make non-stories about a bunch of kids doing nothing. The announcement of Daily Lives of Highschool Boys struck fear into my heart because I thought perhaps Kimi to Boku was not just a once off, and that cute girls doing nothing was going to spread into other genres.

So thank you Daily Dudes. Thank you for not only being that, but satirising the very thing I thought you were going to be.

Macross Frontier

Dropped After: 5 episodes

Why I dropped it: I remember seeing the first episode of Macross Frontier and being totally bowled over by it. It was an absolutely fantastic start to an anime. OK, Ranka was kind of annoying but the animation quality and the general shininess of the thing had me fangasming over it. However once it moved beyond that it just never grabbed me. I was watching the episodes without enjoying them. The story never interested me, the characters never interested me. It was far from ever being a bad anime but it gave me the same vibe as Rental Magica: an anime I continued watching simply because it never was bad. To quote myself from a post from Ye Olde Days

The ones that you can’t really muster much enthu­si­asm to watch the next epis­ode. The anime where you can’t really remem­ber the char­ac­ters names. The one where, if someone asked you if it was any good, you would reply with a resound­ing ‘meh’.

Rebirth Chances: Above average. Most people seem to agree that Frontier is a very solid series so it makes me wonder what I was missing from it. It wasn’t that I was approaching it from the wrong angle or anything like that so it’s a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe I’ll try watching one of the earlier Macross series before returning to this.

Mahoromatic

Dropped After: 10 epis­odes

Why I dropped it: Ah yes, yet another anime on that torrid pathway known as ‘the search for a half-decent seinen romance series’. This was not it. Like many of the other crappy attempts at seinen romance, this was a bunch of unfunny slice of life episodes after an introductory episode that set up the plot.  And it had boobs. Lots and lots of boobs. The more of these crappy seinen romance series I come across doing these posts, the more I come to respect those that did it right.

Rebirth Chances: Low. I actually thought this was a 2-cour series but apparently it only has 12 episodes in. I could have just watched the last two episodes to see what happens, especially since it has a Gainax ending. But it’s been too long since I originally saw it and all I can remember was the boobs and the countdown so I just don’t see the point.

Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto

Dropped After: 5 epis­odes

Why I dropped it: Because it was DULL. This is slice of life in its purest form. It’s so unextraordinary in so many ways. Characters have the most banal conversations possible with the occasional hint at some possible other thoughts they might be having. Actually I’m making it sound worse then it was. It wasn’t actually that bad and the music was really nice (when they decided to play it that is. Normally it was just background city noise) but my interest in watching any further just petered out. I guess I’m just not a fan of humourless slice of life.

Rebirth Chances: Average. As I said, it was far from actually being a bad show and its not like you’d have to hold a gun to my head for me to watch it further. Humourless slice of life though, I just can’t think of an anime I enjoyed that fits that genre. Flicking through my MAL account the ones I could come up with didn’t exactly fit the genre that well. Haibane Remnei, Beck and Clannad After Story were the best I could come up with, none of which exactly fit the bill. There’s one series that will tell me if I’ll ever like this genre: Aria. If I fail to see the appeal in that anime then I’m afraid there’s just no hope for me.

Michiko to Hatchin

Dropped After: 9 epis­odes

Why I dropped it: Oh godz, I blogged this show back in Ye Olde Days because I was seriously looking forward to this show. The same team that worked on Bebop and Champloo? How could you not get hyped for this! Reading back over my old posts, I can see why nobody ever commented on them. My excuse for the quality is due to the total lack of enthusiasm for the series. My main complaints seemed to stem from terrible script writing and generally being pissed off at Michiko. Not matter how much attention to detail they had, when the episodes were as dull and frustrating as they were there was no way I could continue watching it.

Rebirth Chances: Average. One thing I’ve noticed that watching anime weekly vs marathoning is that the great moments become more pronounced, as do the crap moments. This becomes even more noticeable when you’re blogging a series. In that sense, maybe I’m harsher on Michiko to Hatching than I should be because I was blogging the thing. Perhaps detaching myself from the characters would result in a more enjoyable experience watching the show? I won’t know until I try I guess.

Miracle Train

Dropped After: 1 epis­ode

Why I dropped it: You know, I never actually watched episode 1. They showed episode 2 in the anime club I went to for about 3 meetings before giving up because of the participants apparent lack of knowledge in the area of hygiene, most notably in the subject regarding underarm perspiration judging by the stains. They thought this show was the funniest thing in existence. Personally, I think it went right out the other side of laughably terrible.

Rebirth Chances: Are you kidding me? Maybe if I really really really wanted to learn about the Japanese train stations. Or stuck on a desert island with nothing but a dvd player and a Lucky Star box set and this. Or a drinking game. Anything that could be otherwise interpreted as possible attempts at gang-rape, take a drink. Or homosexual undertones. Why do I have this rated as a 2 on MAL anyway? *changes score to 1*

::Edit:: STOP VOTING MIRACLE TRAIN!!! ::Edit::

Yeah, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, the OVA based off the phenomenally highly rated manga (#4 on MAL), is one of the most unabashedly uneventful anime I have ever seen. Usually these humourless slice-of-life series bore me to tears but I did kinda like YKK, mainly thanks to the character of Alpha.

Let me talk for a second about procrastination. Many people consider themselves quite capable procrastinators. Your room never gets tidier than it does around exam time. Your basketball skills improve considerably when you get a office desk job. However, in these forms of procrastinating you are still achieving something. True procrastinating, in its purest form, is where you pass time by doing absolutely nothing. The ability just to be. To blank out all thoughts and to just sit and stare. To reach that perfect place of Zen.

Oddly enough, in YKK, my favourite scenes weren’t when Alpha was getting blasted by lightning or talking to that bloke with the permanent creepy grin. My favourite scenes were of Alpha doing nothing. The second episode of the first OVA consisted of a typical Alpha day. She got up, made coffee (burning the coffee beans slightly) and then sitting by window and gazing. No thoughts, no purpose. My second favourite scene is where Alpha sat on a hill and watched as night fell over a sunken city, watching the lights turn on. Even though she had a camera she never had any intention of taking a photo. It never entered her mind that she should be remembering this scene. She was just sitting and watching.

There are these crazy people that spend their lives meditating in order to achieve perfect peace of mind, something which confused me quite a lot. I never had any problem blanking my mind. I was born a Zen Monk. Alpha may be a robot but she is also capable of complete Zen. I quite like that idea of living with Alpha up in that Quiet Country Cafe. Getting bored suggests that you aren’t enjoying what you’re currently doing and you can think of far better ways to spend you time. Frankly, I can think of no better way to spend my life than with Alpha, gazing out over these sunken cities, watching as each light turns on as the planet continues its slow, peaceful death.

::Fake Edit:: To give you a quick idea of how capable a procrastinator I am, let me point out that this post was planned and half-written about 4 months ago when it was the cool thing to do to post about your waifus.