Aug 20, 2017
Basically, if anyone has seen Oregairu then you will probably see the parallels. in fact, as someone who has seen Oregairu, and liked it, I see more than parallels - I see a ripoff. Except it isn't a good ripoff - by making the protagonist hyper-competent he can't Hachiman (pretend not to care and play scapegoat at the same time) his way through the story, and that takes a lot away from the narrative. In fact, the protagonist Ayanokouji reminds me most of Kirito - a soul-less, personality-deprived screen for an anxious otaku to project themselves onto. the two main girls - Horikita and Kushida,
...
play the roles of Yukino and Yui from Oregairu, respectively, and fail to varying degrees, but I cannot elaborate on why because that would be a spoiler (who cares though?).
Another show this reminds me of is Hyouka, where they also have detective work in school. except that there, it is done in a very classically Sherlockian fashion (with references to the works of Conan Doyle and other great detective authors) and it looks insane. here, it's just plain bullshit because they gloss over all the details that actually make a detective subplot fun and go straight to the artificial drama that this show is awfully fond of.
Another similar show to this one is this season's Kakegurui - both are set in an elite school, both have a cast of obnoxious and unnecessarily-dicky characters, both have red uniforms and both have fan service. except Kakegurui is a cock-tease with a gambling twist and it flaunts this shamelessly at every chance it gets, while this show aspires to being intelligent in the same way that the BBC version of Sherlock does. and it doesn't work. because telling the audience that the story is smart doesn't make it so - as an author, you have to show it.
this show's usage of pretentious quotes reminds of Call of Duty 4, except that they're a little less out-of-place here, but, of course, the series fails to make full use of the opinions of great historical thinkers.
As someone who has been to a boarding school I find the premise of this show just plain retarded. shutting people off from the outside world for THREE YEARS is a terrible idea - they will begin to view their artificial world as the real world, and you don't want that. what you would get in that case would be "elite" assholes who would know nothing about how the world really works, and hence be completely inept once they graduate. no meritorious university would want to touch these people with a 3 metre pole. and not giving them the rulebook? why? to create some contrived hoops for characters to jump through to increase the runtime? I must say I'm not hopeful.
I've seen 4 episodes so far and I don't like how bored I am of it, but I have recently found that I am more entertained by bad anime than I am by good anime, so I fully intend to finish this one. who knows, maybe this "elite" classroom can surprise me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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