Asobi Asobase -workshop of fun-

Episodes 1-3

We don't need yet another anime about cute girls doing cute things in a cute school club, right? Going into the season, that's all that Asobi Asobase seemed to be, with a harmless description about ordinary girls reaching out to make friends. Then the actual episode premiered and revealed itself to be anything but that. Hanako, Kasumi and Olivia are cute girls for sure, but there are definitely not "cute things" going on in the Pastime Club.

It's not that the plot summary was lying, but the show's sensibility is completely different. Asobi Asobase is an ironic take on those kinds of shows, stretching the inherent silliness to the point of absurdity and reflecting the personalities of the sorts of kids who would deliberately create such a ridiculous "club" in the first place. In some ways, it's much closer to my school experience than any of the more sincere cute-girls-doing-cute-things shows out there. I was a driven kid in a bunch of school clubs, but most of thpse descended into "goofing off" fairly quickly. The kind of stuff Asobi Asobase's characters do with their time is not that dissimilar from that of your average teenage shitposter. The school president's reaction is more what you'd expect if someone came to them with such a ridiculous and transparently wasteful club idea. All of these are good draws, but what gives Asobi Asobase a winning formula is how it takes these everyday antics and launches them into absurdity.

Even the show's absurd humor feels sharp as it riffs on genre conventions. Hanako is realistic to how nerdy high schools often resent their more popular peers, but the bizarre conspiracy theories she imagines for them take this relatability into hilarity. Olivia as the "foreign student" who doesn't actually know any English is a spin on a character type usually presented as more "cultured" than the others. Kasumi seems like the quiet and studious one, but she's just as much of a jerk as the rest of them, and her only "serious" quality—her desire to do better in English class—is portrayed as a creepy obsession. Asobi Asobase recognizes how silly its genre trappings are, so it twists them for greater comedy payoff.

For as mean as this show can be to its characters, I think it has a strange sort of affection for them. You can see this in the reveals that everybody else in the school is also a weirdo, from the "compassionate" student council president who is secretly sadistic to the equally intense shogi club president. Asobi Asobase understands that even though its central cast think they're the only kids like them in their school, every kid their age is an oddball in their own way. The one place where this pattern fell flat for me was how it characterized their teacher in episode 3, making fun of her for being too obsessed with landing a boyfriend. The installment was still funny, but it tipped a little too far toward mean-spiritedness for me. But usually, Asobi Asobase's understanding of its characters keeps it from going too far.

One of my favorite things is how the series' music plays such a large part in its humor. Comedy anime often involve goofy uses of music and sound, but rarely do they seem to "comment" on what's happening to the degree that Asobi Asobase's soundtrack does. Sometimes it's through irony, referencing existing tunes, but with comically "off" harmonies or instrumentation to make them seem insincere. Sometimes it's through mock-sincerity, playing a track you'd hear in an actual heartwarming or sad scene just to underscore how much this moment doesn't match that mood (aka "audiovisual counterpoint"). Often it's just the sudden metal guitar power chords, showing how much this isn't your typical moe show. The OP and ED play their own roles in this too. The OP comes off as a straightforward moe school comedy theme, showing the girls as sincere, sweet, and pure in white. The ED's heavy metal and angry chalky visuals reflects the show as it truly is—which makes sense to see after we're already in on the joke.

Asobi Asobase is in some ways a tricky show to review, since it's basically a series of shorts crammed into one full-length episode, but it still gives you plenty to discuss thanks to how many sharp it throws at you each week. One of my favorite installments was the battle against the "soft tennis" club. ("Soft tennis" uses soft rubber balls instead of tennis's harder balls.) The pastimers battle them using hagoita, a type of paddle used for a traditional Japanese sport called hanetsuki that is much less common today. These days, hagoita are mostly created for decorative purposes—and those are the kind they use in the match, which of course prove to be useless. I also liked how Kasumi brags about being good at physics, a claim that often seems to help nonathletic characters get ahead in TV shows—but it doesn't help her at all. Realistically, charting the formula isn't the same as being able to carry it out. Even when the show is being "realistic," the premise remains completely absurd.

So far, Asobi Asobase is like if Please tell me! Galko-chan had Pop Team Epic's sense of humor. It's a good option for anyone who likes zany and random comedy in the context of popular anime genres. If you've had enough of cutesy school-club anime, watch Asobi Asobase to see the concept sent up about as far as it can go.

Rating: A-

Asobi Asobase -workshop of fun- is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a Ph.D. student in musicology, who recently released a book about the music of Cowboy Bebop. You can also follow her on Twitter.