Title: Yuru Yuri
Genre: Comedy
Rating: 6.0/10
Summary: Four fun-loving schoolgirls take over the former room of a tea ceremony club for their own "Gorakubu" (amusement club).
Review: There always has to be one every anime season. The guilty pleasure anime that you watch but know you shouldn’t. One that you expect nothing from yet get a strange sense of satisfaction every episode.
Yuru Yuri was that anime for me this time around. It didn’t really serve a purpose and wasn’t close to the top comedies on my list. In fact, it really didn’t excel at anything in particular. The characters, jokes, and just about everything else was completely generic. Alas, I continued to watch as it ran its short twelve episode career. Even now I can’t think of the reason for continuing to come back week after week. I can’t say it was to kill time because I’m already backlogged with anime thanks to school. However, something was done right about this anime.
The art style is very simplistic. A generic look that many comedies use to take advantage of funny facial expressions and awkwardly large bumps to the head. Much like
K-ON! its lack of shading was a rather prominent missing detail. Both being comedies I can’t say that art is that big of a deal anyway. Because let’s be honest, other than
Level-E I haven’t seen much in terms of artistic realism for a comedy. Since
Yuru Yuri took the typical approach of relying on funny faces and over exaggerated reactions instead of witty one liners, I would say that the art fit. They did a pretty good job trying to move the scene around, but it all ended up exactly the same as any other comedy. They go to conventions, school trips that happen to have outdoor baths, and at some point somebody’s house. Even though they were new scenes they felt old. The ‘story’ wasn’t much better either.
As a comedy what do you expect other than a bunch of quick gags? The only real story you get is the creation of their “Amusement Club” which comprises of them doing nothing. The only time things started to stir up a bit was when one of them says something completely absurd. It also ended up being the exact same thing over and over again. Overly excited to see [Person B] from [Person A], causing [Person A] to try and kiss [Person B]. And if they didn’t have awkward sexual tension between them it was probably because the character was Akarin. Akarin by far is my favorite character of the show because of her complete lack of presence (which they point out multiple times). Her lack of presence and jokes as such were the funniest jokes in the entire show. The introduction to the show often consisted of Akarin attempting to get a word in only to fail due to some other far more interesting event. The other jokes and gags were overplayed and started to get on my nerves. The thing about comedy is you can’t keep telling the same joke over and over again thinking, “It got a laugh once, why not more?!”. That is what I feel is the downfall of most comedies that hit a second season. They try to play off what they feel are the best parts of season one and constantly roll with it. Only to realize either a) it wasn’t funny in the first place or b) they are beating a dead horse. The short gags would have been better if you could actually see a distinction between them. I want to say that the anime had something going for it because it kept me watching for twelve episodes but I can’t actually see it.
The soundtrack was decent, it was strangely addicting at first. Then it turned into background noise as I did other things while the opening and ending ran. The visuals were pretty neat though. They weren’t extravagant or anything, just kind of fun to watch. The ending especially was funny to watch as you see the characters jumping in the air. On a side note, what the heck was with the unnecessarily long transition between the first and second half? Seriously it wasn’t even fan service. There is no point for us to sit there watching someone run for 30 seconds. At least they changed the background for each character. I guess…
Final statements: As I said I can’t give you a reason for why to watch this anime. I actually just pointed out everything negative about it. I still give it a
low priority watch because it gave me a lot of cheap laughs and background noise. A show you can watch by glancing over every now-and-again.
