Softenni

Fun anime, with a great and simple art, excellent fanservice and believe it or not with a good potential for a Shonen-sports anime.

Some of the jokes are local jokes so is probable you won't find them funny but the rest of the anime delves into silly stuff that is easy to follow so you will usually get a laugh out of it.

The antics of High School professor and student were good too, it really makes you wonder "things"...

Kotone and Asuna were the best characters, really good stuff. They showed how chicks can be really crazy sometimes.

The matches that they had were really interesting despite the ... efforts of making a joke/parody out of them, honestly I was wondering if they would have more matches or not, or if we'll see some of the tournament matches. I think there's material there.

The fanservice was excellent, and I strongly recommend to watch the specials.

All in all, a fun and enjoyable anime to watch.

An underdog tennis anime comedy with it's fanservice being *ahem* notorious...

Softenni is a comedy anime centreing around a ragtag bunch of an all girls soft tennis club aiming for nationals. With the captain of the club Chitose Akiyama voiced by Shizuka Ito who can't hit the ball and cares more about food, Kurusu Fuyukawa voiced by Satomi Akesaka as the strange mysterious girl who is strangely proficient in soft tennis but does some weird cosplays, Kotone Sawanatsu voiced by Eri Kitamura as the athletic-centered type but can't control her power and has a crush on her coach You Mishimagi voiced by Shinobu Matsumoto and Asuna ... Harukaze voiced by Kanae Ito, the ditz of the group but has wild fantasies whenever, WHENEVER there is a hint of an sexual innuendo and latter on Elizabeth Warren voiced by Sayuri Yahagi, the foreigner of the group who ALSO has a crush on the coach and like Kurusu is an airhead most of the time and the last member Yayoi Hiragishi voiced by Haruka Tomatsu with a tragic backstory about her sister and her anting to join the club with uhhh "splitting" results. With this we have a typical slapstick, comedy driven anime focusing on soft tennis with varying degrees of success in terms of plot and comedy.

Softenni relies on the soft tennis as more of a backdrop for the characters and quirky antics to flourish in the comedy with the fanservice also having a HEAVY hand in it but that a bit later. The character interactions and the hijinks is the usual driving force of the anime's comedy and how sometimes one certain action from the core cast leads them down an almost rabbit hole of craziness and this being anime, it goes crazy funny, sometimes falls flat, sometimes both and for an anime in 2011...it's alright in all circumstances. As comedy is subjective and how this is an anime centred around soft tennis and comedy, it has it's flaws but some strengths and in it's strengths LA will at least say is that Softenni if anything KNOWS how to make a running gag going and sometimes makes a callback in the weirdest and sometimes funniest ways and in a ways, even though the two most focused characters in this anime are Kotone and Asuna, they are the most developed even for a comedy screwball ecchi anime from 2011.

So the fanservice, well to say that this is Xebec is an obvious hint to what's to come but Xebec took some hints from TNK in which they panty shots and nudity ABUNDANT and LA watched the uncensored version and the fanservice is HEAVY to say the least. No the fanservice is at least serviceable and not in your nose about it, they unlike TNK does it stealthily, it's the nudity count that will make your drinking game make you SOBER by the end of it all. So take what LA said about the fanservice as you will...

But yes from what LA said about the strengths of this anime, the two out of the five of the core cast are the most developed and with Asuna being the narrative focus whilst Kotone goes through some romance arc as well as one involving her and Asuna later, they are the most developed, while the rest of the cast more or less develops their running gags if anything and doesn't really develop beyond that unfortunately, which is sad as someone like Chitose, a character who can't HIT A BALL could've been interesting but instead left as comedy fodder for majority of the anime and LA actually liked Chitose (and because she was voiced by Shizuka Ito) to us finding out snippets of Kurusu but never pinpointing "who she is". Yeah to put into contrast to Kotone and Asuna, Chitose and Kurusu were probably the least developed characters, plot wise in Softenni (sans Yayoi as she only had like ONE episode and that was her introductory episode and she barely have any screentime afterwards)

The animation aforementioned was done by Xebec and for the most part, the animation done by them was actually pretty decent even for an ecchi anime, with decent character designs, ok background work and typical chibi-fied comedy reactions. There's not much beyond that for animation, it's just alright even with the heavy amount of fanservice it has.

The voice cast is kinda what drew LA into this anime and namely Shizuka Ito and Kanae Ito and LA will say at least Kanae Ito and Eri Kitamura were probably MVP's in this anime considering their screentime, whilst Shizuka Ito ended up as the shy type role. But the rest of cast from Sayuri Yahagi as Elizabeth, Satomi Akesaka as Kurusu to some minor voice actors like Minako Kotobuki as Misaki to Haruka Tomatsu as Yayoi. There are some very good voice actors in this anime and yeah due to the rather skewed character hijinks focus, some voice actors got to shine, some were typecast but all in all...decent to GREAT voice cast.

Softenni is pretty much what you get to the exact mark when LA says "a comedy screwball ecchifest anime about soft tennis and the club's crazy antics". Was it good?, in LA's experience in watching it...it was alright, just typical from what you expect from LA's aforementioned statement about Softenni. What you get...is what you get and it EXACTLY what gave us.

Ohhh and the entire Kotone x Mishimagi x Elizabeth love triangle goes nowhere...

If you wonder if you should check this out it's better to wait till there's more episodes. Maybe it'll get better in further episodes. If you want some ecchi scenes you better wait for
BD's cause producers censored everything.

Otherwise - don't bother..

I'm basing it on the first episode but, to be honest i couldn't fun anything worth enjoying.

Series tries to be moe but fails.
It tries to be funny but it's clearly forced and fails.
Tries to be ecchi but producers censored every ecchi scene.
...
Story is forced, doesn't matter much in this genre however...
Art is medicore.. nothing special, nothing bad.
Sound - nothing worth mentioning.

Characters seem to be forced mix of archetypes from other series, and they lack any charm.

Enjoyment is null.. I'd fall asleep while watching if I weren't rushing to finish the episode.

Overall : 4
There are many copy&paste series created to make money. But they usually provide some fun.. In this case maybe some ecchi would save the series from the fall.. however it's all censored.. unless jokes and characters get better in next episodes it will fail miserably.