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If you have no idea what this show is about, you’re one of the lucky few that can still dive into this quirky ‘slice of life at school’ show blind. It’s mostly centred on antics and club events thought up by Yuki, guided by the athletic Kurumi and motherly Yuuri. You’ll either love Yuki, (she’s so crazy~) or empathise with Miki’s level-headed reactions to her; Miki acts as a foil to Yuki, providing some gravitas to the show. After one episode you will likely either want to drop it or watch the rest. If you don’t know anything about it, watch an episode before you ... read the rest of the review.

If you’re reading on past this paragraph I’m assuming that you’ve either finished the first episode or at least know what happens in it. It’s pretty much impossible to describe the show without giving away things that happen in the first episode, but I’ll avoid spoiling anything beyond that.

If someone had come up with the idea of ‘moe horror’ I would have regarded it with the same suspicion that I would regard a ‘death-game harem’, or a ‘mecha romance’. It’s all well and good in theory, but if you try to keep a consistent tone while staying true to the concept you’re inevitably going to wind up with too much ‘harem’ and not enough ‘death-game’, or too much ‘moe’ and not enough ‘horror’ (or, to continue with the analogy, some really inorganic character development). To balance out the conflicting themes in this instance you really need some sort of excuse to violently flip between a light-hearted slice of life show and a dark post-apocalyptic horror without breaking the audience’s immersion. Fortunately, one method to making this strange transition between completely different tones work resides under Yuki’s cat-ear beanie. With what comes across as either complete insanity or a pathological determination to keep things happy and light-hearted, Yuki manages to get the other characters to forget about their situation, which in turn lulls the audience into that same sense of security. With such a setup, flipping the show back into a horror is as simple as cutting away from the mood Yuki has created.

We soon discover that the show’s title is a clever pun in more ways than one. ‘Gakkougurashi’ follows the daily lives of a cast of mostly schoolgirls that are quite literally living at a school, flipping between their attempts to have fun and enjoy their lives on a day-to-day basis, on the one hand, and showing how each of them found themselves in such a situation, on the other.

A significant portion of ‘School-Live!’ is spent on flashbacks, showing events that led up to their current situation. This approach takes away from the tangible sense of threat, but has the advantage of bringing the oh-so-rational Miki into the first episode (which is an amazing thing for people that aren’t a huge fan of Yuki). It’s a trade-off and a departure from the source material, which unfortunately leads to a few minor plot holes being ripped open from the fabric of the narrative. Given the context of the narrative presented, I was happy for them to spend plenty of time showing how the situation had come to be the way it was. That’s where most of the excitement of this setting should reasonably come from given the nature of the show. Once our protagonists have managed to find safety, the plot as it is generally needs to rely on their desperation or stupidity to inject any new threat into the narrative without the audience losing immersion, so focusing on the lead-up to their situation was a good idea overall.

The characters vary widely in personality traits and outlook, and you’ll likely find that at least one of them has a mentality you can gel with. The power dynamic and relationships between the girls are multifaceted and interesting mainly because of what they represent. Yuuri holds an unspoken and uncontested authority over the group as a pre-designated maternal leader, Kurumi is a hot-headed badass that quickly resorts to violence, Yuki is a psychotic and emotionally manipulative idealist, Miki is a stoic and cold-shouldered pessimist, and Megu-nee is very similar to that clumsy yet lovable substitute teacher you likely once had: she panics, falls over, and drops things, and is ignored far too often by her students when they don’t need her help. From that melting pot of conflicting ideals and character archetypes comes a series of friendships built from necessity; built upon the cornerstone that is the hardship of their desperate situation.

There’s a sense of self-awareness maintained in the writing throughout, whether it’s (quite literally) pointing to other works that it has drawn inspiration from (such as the movie ‘I am Legend’ and the novels of Stephen King), or lampshading apparent plot contrivances by having the characters ask questions the audience were themselves wondering about (viz. why is this school so oddly well prepared for what happened?). This is one of the biggest strengths of the show and a huge part of why I’m comfortable giving it a high score. The writers clearly knew the artistic context of what they were doing and had a reasonable sense of how the audience would react to what they were seeing.

The art of ‘28 Moes Later’, however, was an unfortunate stumbling block that marred the show in some respects. I’m not against the ‘moe’ art design and see nothing intrinsically wrong with it (except that it’s being used so often in modern anime that any departure from it feels like a breath of fresh air). The problem is moments of laziness and inconsistency that were obvious enough to be distracting: the characters are occasionally drawn out of proportion or with slightly misplaced features. It’s not something I would normally bring up, but it’s an obvious bad sign when such mistakes are even apparent to people that aren’t looking for them.

I briefly mentioned before that this show had departed from the source material in several respects. Some of these changes were worse than others. The inclusion of Miki in the first episode was a reasonably appropriate change from the manga; however, cutting out most of Miki’s character development by simplifying her backstory was a strange decision. If only they hadn’t included multiple episodes worth of drawn out sequences of events that did nothing to further the plot (viz. filler), we could have at the very least blamed the restrictions in episode length and number for biting the source material in the backstory! Speaking of backsides, that’s about how abruptly (and awkwardly) this show segues into fanservice. The artistic direction panders to its audience in this regard to the point where it gets in the way of the plot; the writers of the show seemed to hold contempt for the idea that there are only so many appropriate times and places for panty shots or getting changed into bikinis. Fortunately these moments don’t tend to occur in conjunction with the more ‘dark’ scenes, a plot contrivance that I’m more than happy to forgive when faced with the alternative (a brutal deconstruction in more ways than one). Suffice to say, if you’re put off by unnecessary fanservice you may find a few scenes cringeworthy. Most of it is well within the bounds of plausible deniability though, so it’s fair to bet that you won’t find it worth dropping the show over.

Back to the positives, the OP of this series is a blast! Each episode the opening video is slightly (or dramatically) altered so that it’s full of Easter eggs and little pieces of foreshadowing. One of the fun things about following along with the show week by week as it aired was seeing the community pore over all the minor details and changes, most of which I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise! The ending songs ranged from ‘boring enough to skip’ to ‘delivering emotional crits’, depending on how well you’ve connected with the characters.

‘Night of the Living Lolis’ is in some respects what you make of it, which is fitting given that one deeper theme brought up in the show is about the extent to which one can construct their own reality, and to what extent this functions as a tool for overcoming adversity. It’s a theme that’s there, but the onus is on the viewer to engage with that theme if they want to. No direct questions and answers about these things are thrust in the audience’s face, but how you engage with the aforementioned ideas will be made clear from what you think of the characters that espouse respective opinions on those same ideas through their conduct.

After a middle arc easily described as wading through treacle, the final arc of ‘GG’ regains focus and the plot starts to lunge forward to an exciting conclusion, quelling any fears that the setting had been forgotten about. How much of an impact this show will have on you will come down in part to how willing you are to forgive plot contrivances due to being invested in the characters, although in your judgement of such things you’ll often be less disappointed if you give the writers the benefit of the doubt. For what it’s worth, rape alarms are that loud, rusty metal is that weak, generators do make noise, and shovels are heavy.

If ‘not judging a book by its cover’ has equivalents in anime, one could be ‘not judging a show by its genre’. And while it certainly wasn’t many of the animators, at least someone from Lerche genuinely tried to make this work. At a first glance, Gakkougurashi! looks like the result of moe creeping into ever more unfitting genres and settings, but thanks to the great writing it truly showed signs of life even when it should have by all rights been dead on its feet.

The Cute Girls Doing Cute Things (CGDCT) formula reportedly found its roots in shows such as Azumanga Daioh. The concept was simple enough: Introduce a group of girls that are going to some school and give them all unique character traits, using their day-to-day interaction as the basis for light-hearted hilarity and possibly some drama. After noticing the warm reception some of these prototypical CGDCT shows were receiving, many studios decided to make their own tweaks to the formula. Some ideas included marrying the Slice of life (SOL) style of show with another concept, giving rise to such variations as Cute Girls in Pop Band, ... and Cute girls in Purgatory. Another idea was to tweak the aesthetic, further popularising the ‘moe’ art style. Over time, the formula was further refined, as each trope and character trait which initially reflected some aspect of the human condition was slowly twisted into something artificial and sinister. Shortcuts to human emotions were found and exploited, and soon the CGDCT formula hit critical mass: Yuru Yuri was born.

‘Nachuyachumi! +’ is a pair of extra episodes for the Yuru Yuri addicts; a bone thrown to those eagerly waiting for a third season of the franchise, made to follow up from the movie (Nachuyachumi!). Suffice to say, if you want an introduction to the series, there’s no real reason for you to start with this couple of episodes instead of with the first season: it comes across in the writing that it’s generally expected you have seen the series up to this point, such as when characters reference past gags.

The plot is straightforward enough. True to its title, a significant portion of ‘Nachuyachumi! +’ is spent reflecting on and building upon the events in Nachuyachumi! Now back from their camping trip, the main four cast members spend the remainder of the summer vacation creating fun memories. After an impromptu session taking funny pictures of each other, the main cast spend time looking over photos they had taken during their camping trip. Misunderstandings, physical comedy, and hints of romance between characters make up the bulk of the content. Kyoko is as mischievous and arrogant as ever, Yui cracks a smile, and Chinatsu is at least half as scary as you’d expect her to be.

The opening and ending songs are light hearted and energetic, but stand out entirely differently from each other. The opening is a strange and arguably corny slap-bass mishmash, while the ending is a very well balanced composition that totally fits the mood of the show.

There is a simple joy that can be found in the achievement of simple goals, and a theme that makes itself known through ‘Nachuyachumi! +’ is just that: the creation of something tangible from the summation of many trivial things, or to put it another way, the achievement of many seemingly irrelevant and simple goals leads to the creation of a joyful memory: a personal piece of history that can be looked back upon with nostalgia. The cast set out to have fun and create good memories, and they achieve this through the completion of many simple and arbitrary tasks, whether it’s staging a sumo wrestling match, playing catch with water balloons, or even conspiring to take a picture of Kyoko while she’s asleep.

One disappointment was that too much of the second episode was spent watching the cast play various video games with each other, which wound up feeling stale almost immediately. Seeing the characters interact with each other in person is a strong suit of the show, so having them sitting still in a room only virtually interacting meant there was an even stronger reliance of previously established relations between the characters for such events to be engaging.

N!+ is not profound. It’s not a leap forward or change of direction for the Yuru Yuri universe. What it is, is a cute and enjoyable stocking filler fit to tide over Yuru Yuri fans as they wait for the third season, and at the end of the day, a worthy addition to the franchise.

There's a tendency among some to assume that the creators of certain post-modern art pieces have hidden great symbolic value and deeper meanings in them, even when such interpretations are indistinguishable from the rationalisation of someone who will stubbornly insist that anything they've willingly subjected themselves to wasn't a waste of their time: Some people say that Shitcom is an elegant deconstruction of romantic comedy tropes that manages to find a punchy and concise way to depict the struggle of finding others that love you for who you really are deep down, but I think they're just talking shit.

‘Tinki Danzo: attack of the leftover stock model’ is a truly groundbreaking piece of animation that sets a new standard. From the fellow members of your species that brought you the 30 second deconstructionist comedy short ‘Mars of Destruction’, comes a plot of 5 girls set with the task of saving the earth from a levitating bronze squid shaped asset left on Jamal’s computer from his graphic design class, by - brace yourself for this one - firing a bazooka at its core. The plot is open ended, with such deep questions as ‘Why on earth would it be necessary to have 5 separate ... girls piloting separate flying robots to execute a plan that literally consists of nothing more than ‘fire a bazooka at the target’?’ and ‘Who the hell keeps funding this studio?’ left open to interpretation.

‘Stinky Ducknuts: the power of the squid compels you’ makes sure to allot all of its too long 14 minute runtime (after subtracting the OP and ED) carefully, deciding to stick to merely developing a half dozen or so unique human characters as well as building a romance between two of them, establishing the nature and motives of a mysterious antagonist, debating the destructive nature of the human condition and displaying a geopolitically significant battle of an advanced human civilisation saving itself from destruction at the hands of the aforementioned l̶e̶v̶i̶t̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶q̶u̶i̶d mysterious threat. With such time constraints, efficiency of character development is the key to success. ‘Tepid Dirges: Stock Model Magic’ goes for gold in regards to this, slotting all character exposition of the 6 named characters into a mere 86 seconds.

It sounds impossible, but they really did that. Here is the dialogue verbatim:
“Midori-san. an emergency call”
“Good. I was getting tired of waiting.“
“Here I go.”
“You’re so forceful, Misaki”
“You too.”
“Take This.”
“Ahhhh. You got me all dirty.”
“What do you want Lin.”
“Oh... Ah... an emergency call.”
“Oh, it’s finally time to show them what we have, huh?”
“Misaki . . . look at that.” *cuts to squid*

*flashback*
“How long are you going to take a shower?”
“Huh?”
“Stop daydreaming, I’ll be going ahead.”
*blank stare*
5 years have passed since then already
*cut to a different room, now in the present time*
*grunting sounds as the camera fixates on two girls strapped to seats which are moving up and down*
*A guy grabs Lin’s shoulder and smiles at her.*
-aaand cut!
That’s it. We’ve established u̶n̶i̶q̶u̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶i̶s̶t̶i̶c̶s m̶o̶t̶i̶v̶e̶s̶ . . at least the NAMES of our entire crew of Lin, Midori, Misaki and .̶ ̶.̶ ̶.̶ ̶f̶u̶c̶k̶. and shown a real bond between Lin and, err, the guy that grabbed her shoulder and smiled at her that one time.

In summary, ‘Cultural Thalidomide: Please, oh please, I just want my 15 minutes back’ is truly a work of art. I’d go on analysing it but that would be wasting more of your time than the show does, and from a moral and comedic perspective I must show restraint. Ensure yourself that nothing of substance or merit springs forth in the remaining minutes of tortuous mediocrity that you’ll have otherwise insisted on subjecting your poor brain to in lieu of the inexhaustible library of relatively great art that patiently waits for its turn in the spotlight. After all, now that you understand what ‘bad’ truly means, you’ll possibly better appreciate the good art that you have access to.

Under its apparition of slow pacing and dull characters, their lies in the depths of Serial Experiments Lain; the most unique method of storytelling I have ever seen. The key to this is in the writers' careful decision to leave multiple coherent interpretations of the plot open to the viewer, in essence creating (at least) two separate (but thematically connected) stories with the one show.

This bizarre method of storytelling is done by presenting the viewer with one apparent sequence of events and character interactions, then retroactively reinterpreting them in later episodes. It's recklessly abstruse and will put off many viewers (just like the opening of ... this review), but by the same token is incredibly rewarding for the viewer willing to put some proper effort into working out what is going on or do some extra research about the show after having seen it.

There are a plethora of easter eggs, references and philosophical ideas thrown at the viewer, often related to the concept of self in an online world. The titular character of the show and her interactions with people from different walks of life comprise the vehicle through which these ideas are explored.

The artwork is the product of Yoshitoshi ABe. I should be able to leave it at that. His character designs are stunning and the choices in set design and visual presentation make it clear that there was a very strong level of communication between ABe and Nakamura and Ueda, the director and producer respectively.

The atmosphere invoked by the humming of electrical lines, the pulsing of cars through the arteries of streets, the whirring of computer's internal organs and so on is eerie and surreal. There isn't a strong use of background music in the show, but this scarcity only makes the few tracks that do make an appearance stand out all the more. It's worth noting that certain songs are contextual cues in the show and play into the plot in a small way. The OP is magnificent, and surprisingly enough sung in English.

In order to get the most out of this show, whenever you're presented with two contradictory events try to start with the assumption that it was intentional and then reflect on why such an inconsistency would be presented, remembering that the key information with which you can make sense of a scene may lie in a later episode.

Although I gave this show a 10 I feel that it is necessary to clarify that I do not consider this show flawless, but rather that the flaws it does have don't detract from the overall experience. For example, the pacing in the opening episodes is incredibly slow, but this works in the show's favour later on as you spend more and more time trying to make sense of the events shown. On repeat viewings, even the first episode no longer feels like it is dragging on, as by then it has become obvious that even minor details can be interpreted in significant ways.

In summary, Serial Experiments Lain is not just a puzzling show, but a puzzle, and an incredibly satisfying one to try to solve, even if you do wind up with more new questions than answers at times. The key is online.