Joshikousei: Girl's High

If your a teenage boy and you wanted to know the kind of conversations 14 to 15 year old girls have when the boys aren't around, boy is this anime going to scratch that itch whether you want it or not. The story of Joshi Kousei: Girl's looks at the lives of 6 teenage girls as they make the transition from middle school to high school and how they're excited and somewhat nervous about making that transition to high school. However, as they start they're first day oh high school they are constantly building up and exaggerating an unrealistic expectation on what to expect out ... of going to an all girl's high school with often results in a lot of great hilarity.

The biggest credit I will give to this anime and watching the misadventures of 6 teenage girls as they navigate the scary reality of going to high school for the very first time is that it's incredibly funny. I can't tell you how many times this anime has had plenty of laugh out loud moments regardless if it's through visual gags, embarrassing situations, or sharp witted dialogue but the funny thing is that the humour comes from all of the 6 anime girls to varying degrees. Even though we have 6 main characters in this anime with the girls Eriko and Akira taking up the majority of the spotlight and being responsible for some of the best humour throughout the anime, but I do appreciate the fact that each of the other school girls has their moment to shine throughout this entire experience. All these silly shenanigans take place throughout typical high school settings that you'd expect out of an all girl's Japanese high school such as the first day of school, the high school physical, different sports and cultural festivals, and even a good old fashioned trip to the amusement park during summer break.

I will hand it to this anime because the concept of the anime could of been really boring and incredibly clean cut while we watch a bunch of high school girls try to navigate high school but the anime goes the extra mile of tackling on topics that are not necessarily clean cut but in all actuality are topics that teen girls probably talk about to their female friends when their parents or boys are not around albeit they do it in hysterical fashion. They talk about periods, beauty tips, sex, body image, boys, getting a date, having a crush on their teacher, dealing with perverts, and dating parties which often leads into a lot of expected hilarity. They even take the time albeit not to a great detailed length that some of the girls have gone through some aspect of teenage life that many teenage girls have already experienced through adolescence. One of the female characters has already lost her virginity, one high school girl dreams of being an actress, one of the teenage girls has a boyfriend and is being unbelievable lovey dovey throughout the entire experience. Despite the anime's focus on humour throughout the many misadventures of trying to navigate an all girl's high school it does take a break about the halfway point of the anime when a meddlesome little sister of one of the 6 main female high school students goes to great lengths to sabotage the friendship that her older sister has with these 5 other girls. The little sister has issues of her own and it's up to the bigger sister to find out why she is acting this way while protecting the friendship she has with these 5 other girls. It gives the viewer a nice little break from the zany humour that you'll see throughout this anime.

The biggest elephant to address in the room when it comes to this anime is the fan-service and the fan-service in this anime is really a mixed bag. It never truly goes over the line of actually showing any nudity of any sort but the fan-service definitely is there with the amount of panty shots and close ups on specific female body parts throughout this 12 episode misadventure but the fan-service is done in such a way where it's exemplified from my perception for purely comical purposes. This is definitely the case in the episode where the girls are going through their high school physical by wearing these scantily clad hospital gowns as they navigate through the school to get through each section of the high school physical before the end of the school day and another case where the girls suffer wardrobe malfunctions as they're going down the water-slide at the amusement park. I personally think the anime does an excellent job camouflaging the tame fan-service with some well placed humour without making things too uncomfortable.

The plot of the anime in itself is very self contained minus the two serious episodes. You could watch the anime at any point and not really totally lost with whatever is transpiring throughout each of the episodes which gives this anime a very sit-com feel to it. It truly is about teen girls learning the ropes of getting through the first year of high school while maintaining the friendships they have with each other without getting on each other's nerves.

The anime is actually animated very beautifully for 2006, it has that feel of a late 90's anime while having a nice glossy finish with regards to how the teen girls are designed. The anime has this very brief gag at the very beginning of each episode where the teen girls are dressed up as a type of anime fandom regardless if it's pirates, samurai, detectives, or part of a rock band. I really love how the teen girls are animated during the ending credits of each episode. They all have their little dance that they perform during the end credits and the way that the girls are animated while they're dancing is probably some of the best animation I seen in this anime. The music that is used in each episode is passable, but the the highlights of the music is definitely the opening and ending themes with the ending theme of Joshi Kousei being my personal favourite.

I personally got my enjoyment out of this anime for having some really effective humour while tackling on topics that no boy really wants to listen. It's probably not a complete accurate representation of the things that teen girls talk about when it comes to going through high school but no matter what the characters talk about, or what playful struggles they have to endure you can be guaranteed that it's going to cause a lot of intentional humour because of it. This anime does something that often a lot of anime struggle with and that is they manage to make all the main characters in this anime completely likeable in their own little way which contributed to my overall enjoyment out of it. It's not going to blow you away, but I hope the great humour in this anime keeps you interested in watching it right to the very end.

What you see, is what you get...

Joshikousei: Girl's High is what you really get when you get an Arms anime adaptation with an all girls cast in school with the typical ecchi hijinks that entails to it and LA could as EASILY have let this review out like that buuut might as well continue. Shall we?

With Joshikousei: Girl's High being a very "comedic hijinks" anime well let's start there, well this is an Arms anime so right off the bat, the ecchi shows itself with the typical chest and boob shots and of course the anime uses this as comedy mostly in the main cast ... in undress or "costumes" one way or another, again Arms anime. But for the most part the comedy revolves around the characters jabbing at one another...most of the time the comedy falling flat as the execution and buildup towards most of the"comedic hijinks" are planned out that you can see it projected a mile away. So to this end, did LA even laugh "at all" in this anime...nope. Already falling behind huh -sigh-.

The characters of Joshikousei: Girl's High have a bit of development to them and LA has at least two favourite characters, one out of default the other genuine. First is Eriko Takahashi voiced Hitomi Nabatame, the ditz of the group but has times of genius, she has her moments another words but generally is paired with Yuuichirou Odagiri voiced by Mitsuaki Madono her highschool homeroom teacher...who's also a narcissistic and is generally the buttmonkey outside of Eriko's group. Next is Akari Kouda voiced by Satsuki Yukino, the "comedic one" of the group, wanting to be actress one and has a fetish of wearing "wacky costumes" which becomes a running gag throughout the anime, Yuma Suzuki voiced by Masumi Asano is the usual tomboyish girl of the group and has beef with her little sister which does become one of the ONLY serious plotlines in the entire anime. Ikue Ogawa voiced by Sawa Ishige is the naive loli of the group and is generally a satellite character to our next character Kyoko Himeji voiced by Kyouko Hikami the most sane of the group and because of that she is one LA's more genuine favourite characters in the anime with Ayano Satou voiced by Mamiko Noto being the typical shy girl of the group but actually having a boyfriend with a LOONG name in which Ayano says it OFTEN as a running gag, she's also subjected to the buttmonkey status to the rets of the group thanks to her having a boyfriend as a result, guess why LA likes Ayano?...no not because of her glasses!?, she's the buttmonkey to the rest of the group of course and thus LA can feel sorry for her more or less. So overall the characters are slim pickings in terms of good characterization but what there is, the few episodes that dedicates itself to it's characters are minimal as Joshikousei: Girl's High seems to focus on comedy over it's characters in this regard.

The animation done by Arms is...expected from them, even early on in the mid-2000's (this was made in 2006). Arms animation is rather basic, even with it's fanservice of all things, with bland typical character designs (sure school girls so), bland typical backgrounding with the only thing LA could give Arms some grace would be it's comical animation because you know, "comedic ecchi anime". Overall Arms' animation was typical even in 2006, quality not withstanding because it WAS the mid-2000's (to counter this though, when this anime came out, animes like School rumble and Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu were out, soooooo)

The voice cast was expected especially with the characters that were presented, LA WILL some grace at least as most of the voice actors did decently well with the characters they were given, especially from Kyouko Hikami as Himeji, Satsuki Yoshino as Kouda and Masumi Asano as Yuma and Mamiko Noto as Ayano. So decent voice cast overall, being a bit better in the animation department with what source material they were given after all.

LA heard the author of Joshikousei: Girl's High, Towa Oshima being inspired by her own school experiences and with this anime, surely SOME of her experiences were exaggerated to a certain extent for comedy but LA can "kinda" get behind this statement mainly with the clique of the main cast, the fanservice parts and all...questionable at least.

Joshikousei: Girl's High has it's MAJOR problems with it, namely the anime entirely focused on comedy over character thus leading to bland characterization towards most of the cast, ok production value from Arms namely the animation even in 2006 when it was released and the biggest complaint LA being the comedy is extremely predictable thus lost any chance of LA laughing even once as to how projected it is. But with it's flaws, Joshikousei: Girl's High has SOME good points namely what characters that have development, namely Yuma, Ayano and Himeji gives us the littlest bit of investment to them and the voice cast did "ok" and uhhh...that's it...hehe.

Joshikousei: Girl's High is the best definition of an anime of "What you see is what you get" when your reading the synopsis of this anime, or a better statement would be..."exactly what it says on the tin". Joshikousei: Girl's High is your typical ecchi all girls cast school anime you'd see in the early to late 2000's anime you'd see and from Arms no less, with the only "claim to fame" Joshikousei: Girl's High has gotten being that it's ED getting memetic to the point of it being parodied in other animes...

Sometimes in life you come across a piece of media that really makes you rethink your stance on every other piece of media you've consumed. For me, that piece of media is 'Joshikousei: Girl's High'. From just the name and cover art alone, my expectations were already reasonably low, although, I'm not sure if anything could have prepared me for this dumpster fire of an anime. This anime couldn't just leave it at being a painfully mediocre comedy, they had to go the whole mile. If I could compare this anime to anything, it would probably be like getting swamp ass with white pants on. ... It's not worth covering specific points about this show because everything is within the range of extremely forgettable to offensively terrible. I have a new appreciation for life now.