Yuyushiki – First Impressions

Streaming Allegiance: Crunchyroll
Reconnaissance Report by: Miki
Progress: Episode 1


yuyushiki promoWithout being aware of too many of them, I get the feeling that “slice-of-life school club comedies” are a dime a dozen now. After Azumanga Daioh set the standard for the genre (well, without the club bit) in the early 2000s, it’s difficult to call the rest true “copycats” – they all explore different clubs, even if the style of humor is largely the same. It’s not like a ton of these all run concurrently, so it’s kind of like a burger that you keep ordering over and over again. It was great the first time, and it’s still good the other times, except for the occasional bad lettuce or old bun or something like that.

That said, Yuyushiki is the same old burger, on an almost-stale bun but the meat is nice and fresh (This metaphor is kind of getting out of hand…). Yui, Yukari, and Yuzuko are friends that manage to get into the same class their first year of high school. When trying to decide on what club to join, they see a flier for a “data processing club” that currently has zero members. After discovering that their likeable homeroom teacher (who they affectionately call “Mom,” despite not yet being 30) is in charge of the club, they decide to join. What follows is a scene where the girls spend the afternoon at the computer googling things they’re curious about. The school day ends, and Yuzuko trips on a brick sticking up from the school sidewalk.

While it sounds like a show about nothing (which was part of what fueled my morbid curiosity about it), the gags from the original 4-panel manga on which the series is based are peppered all throughout their first school day. However, the show aims to shoot a TON of arrows in hopes that a few will hit their mark, and those few that do really strike home. The real “gimmick” of the show, I’m hoping, is the random information-gathering sessions they undertake as the club activity and the jokes that are born out of their free-association attempts to relate the information to other facts and facets of their lives.

Not bad at all. Your mileage on some jokes may vary, but it’s a pretty solid foray into familiar territory.

Score: 8/10