Anime: Seitokai Yakuindomo

Is it possible to make a comedy revolving almost exclusively around sex jokes, and not have it come off low-brow and immature, ala American Pie? The answer? Seitokai Yakuindomo!



Thanks to clever wordplay, good writing and actual punchlines, Seitokai Yakuindomo manges to craft a sex comedy that avoids the pitfall of simply being crass for the sake of crassness and is all the more funnier for it. No matter how many jokes about ejaculation they make. By taking their sex jokes down the path of wordplay and and humorous misunderstandings, (instead of making shallow references to dicks and expecting the audience fall over dead from laughter), Seitokai Yakuindomo almost manages to give itself a sense of class. Almost. But more importantly, this makes the gags actually funny. Funny in the traditional comedy sense where the jokes are funny because the audience is required to actually use their brains. But make no mistake, the subject of the jokes are lewd. By the time you've finished the series, you've seen jokes about fellatio, heard English swearing, jokes about menstruation, jokes about S&M, jokes about vaginas, jokes about pedophilia, and multiple instances of vibrator jokes. There's even a gag about being molested by a deer. Needless to say, those who hate sex jokes, or the easily offended, probably won't enjoy Seitokai Yakuindomo. And yet somehow, the show manages to not be ridiculously offensive, despite containing gags that would make South Park blush. I think this is combination of the way the jokes are presented in an innocent, serious way (sort of like the characters are unaware what they're saying is inappropriate for the situation, if that makes sense) and the colorful cheery art style.


Seitokai Yakuindomo is a great way to learn almost all the dirty words the Japanese language has to offer

Moving on to the plot, Ousai Private Academy, previously an all-girls school, has just become a co-ed school. Takatoshi Tsuda is attending this year as one of the school's first and few male students, not with the intent of forming a harem like many of the other male students, but because it's close to his house. On his first day, his sloppy attire catches the attention (and ire) of student council president Shino Amakusa, whom is a stickler for rules, and as Takatoshi will soon discover, has a habit of making deadpan lewd jokes. Takatoshi next meets the remaining members of the student council. There's Suzu Hagimura, super intelligent, but has the height and build of a grade schooler with a fiery temper about said to match. And rounding out the cast (in more ways than one), is Aria Shichijou, gentle, kind and air-headed upper-class girl but probably the most perverse of them all. Shino quickly ropes Takatoshi into becoming the student counsel's vice-president, mostly as a way of getting a male's perspective on school matters, but also because there's only so much you can learn about the male body from sex ed class. But the plot of Seitokai Yakuindomo is nothing more than an excuse for jokes, so don't worry too much about it. And being based on a four panel comic series, there are a LOT of jokes.


The cast of Seitokai Yakuindomo, clockwise starting from the bottom left, Suzu, Takatoshi, Shino and Aria

Seitokai Yakuindomo's animation is nothing too special, it's decently animated with an average-looking art style, nothing about it really stands out. Likewise, audio and music is average. However, the acting is top caliber, the actors put their all into the jokes and play a huge role in making the humor work. However, most of the characters are stereotypes, with the type of voice you've come to expect for these classic archetypes. Aria is the typical "My! My! My!" soft-voiced air-head. Suzu is short-tempered and shouts a lot. Takatoshi is the "straight man". However, there are two standout characters in Seitokai Yakuindo that are a little more unique. Ranko Hata (played by Satomi Arai) is the wannabe paparazzi from the photography club who has this hilarious dull monotone voice that makes every scene she's in a real treat. The next is Naruko Yokoshima (played by Yuu Kobayashi) the lusty, man-eating female teacher, who speaks in a low, breathy seductive manner as though she's continually attempting to seduce everyone in the room.


Even the Japanese find a guy being sexually harassed by an attractive woman hilarious!

This series makes no bones about what is is, that is, it's nothing more than a platform for a rapid-fire series of sex jokes, and at this, I feel it's a flying success. The show is absolutely hilarious, which is all it needs to be. As a result, there's very little I can criticize it for. It's only real flaw is the length, only thirteen episodes, which is average for most anime, but for Seitokai Yakuindomo, it feels like this isn't enough and it has more jokes to tell. Thankfully, there's a sequel, but the original series could have stood to have been longer. In conclusion, Seitokai Yakuindomo is an excellent comedy series, provided you don't find it's lewd subjects offensive, and you don't mind that there's very little story. Anyone who loves a well-written sex comedy should check it out!


George approves!

Not a sex-comedy or an ecchi-comedy, but a comedy about sex.

Seitokai Yakuindomo is a really fun series if your mind is only focused on sex-jokes. Pretty much 95% of the show purely consists of jokes, word-puns and more jokes about sex and anything related to sex in a sort-of 4-panel manga pace. Does it have anything else to offer? Well, actually it hasn't. But that isn't necessary either, because the show is a comedy about sex and it does it remarkably well.

But do you have what it takes to sit through 13 episodes filled with only sex jokes?

Animation: Remarkably good animation.

Backgrounds

First thing that comes to mind is that it has really good animation. I really like the backgrounds which are most of the time very detailed and realistic CG backgrounds, without (and here comes the good part) actual clashing with the characters. While there is not always any interaction with the background layer, they also don't look out of place when the characters are displayed against that same background. Seeing how only few series manage to do this, it's getting two – no, three thumbs up from me in terms of quality.
If you have read any reviews of mine in the past few years, you'll probably come across of a few remarks from me concerning this and realize that these kind of details are what ticks me off – or makes me happy.

The backgrounds are not always superb though, but it is at least on a level of a high-class eroge anime adaption. That is, except for the comic relief parts where they switch out the backgrounds for a single-color one in order to focus on the joke itself.

Characters

Aside from the backgrounds I really like the character designs and while there hasn't gone as much detail into them as I would like, they are done well. The often revert to the degenerated or simplistic comical counterpart due to the comedy-effect, but even those suit the characters.

Sound: Why … why do the seiyuu have to sing the OP?

OP/ED

I'm not always happy with the fact that an anime has the OP or ED sung by the cast and this series is one of these shows where they let the cast sing the OP. While there are several who are perfectly capable of singing a decent song, some of the members of the cast need to stick to their voices from the characters and those are not always suitable (Suzu, anyone?) to sing. The OP is therefore not really to write home about.

The ED on the other hand is sung by Angela, one of my favorite singers, although I feel like she has produced a lot more songs which are better than this one. That doesn't mean the song is bad, as it is simply a good song and I like the fast paced rhythm and lyrics.
The animation is quite nice as well, reminding me somewhat of Bakemonogatari for some reason. I wouldn't mind seeing an anime which was animated that way, but it's pretty unconventional.

Voices & Music

The cast is chosen well and I didn't feel like there were any characters who didn't have a proper voice actor/actress, nor did I feel anywhere throughout the show that they did a bad job on the acting. Everything felt proper and suitable, which is a good thing.
The music / BGM is chosen well too, I think. Most of the time it adds to the show, without distracting from it. So generally you won't hear it until you start looking for it. At least I didn't have any complaints about it and I needed to look back on it to hear what it was.

Story: How much can you make of sex-jokes?

Sex jokes. And that's pretty much everything you can say about this show in terms of story. There are two participants in the student council which are always and only thinking about sex and therefore talking about sex, leaving the other characters pretty much only to react to them – including the male protagonist.

While the jokes are ranging from incredibly silly and farfetched to amusing to really funny to the point where it makes you laugh, I found myself most of the time not laughing. I can stand a good sex joke, but after a while the jokes grow old and you can see them coming from a mile away. Sometimes you don't – and then you laugh again – but the show uses the pace of a 4-panel manga and unless you're really hot for these kind of jokes, they eventually get old.

Rating it is a problem as it doesn't contain an actual plot, but there is no way to rate the number of jokes of a comedy. So I'll leave it on average.

Characters: Great characters.

Even more than a good story, it is the characters that make a good show and this show has plenty of them. None of them get anywhere near the character development a good plot generally comes with, but then again, how many comedy shows actually develop characters? Most of them simply put down a character and uses them to get the comedy going and that's exactly what this show does: it uses the characters well, based on the outlines they have made for their personalities.

While at times the jokes tend to get old, another recurring part is the height of poor Suzu. They get creative with them though and surprisingly it is this girl that gets the most character development.

So, is it worth watching?

The show is obviously funny but at the same time also really average at other times, but with any comedy show it generally depends on how you experience the comedy, so it is hard to say whether the show is good or bad.

At least the animation, voice acting and characters aren't any reasons for you to avoid the show, as all of them are rock solid. So it all comes down on whether you appreciate a sex joke and how much you can handle of them.

In the end I thought the show was a nice watch, although I don't think I'd ever watch it again. Just like you don't laugh as much when you hear a joke the second time, pure comedy shows are often not meant to watch again. But if you come across this show, feel free to watch as it might just be your cup of tea.

Short clipping!

Ousai Gakuen Rule No..? How many sexual jokes can you fit in an anime before it stops being funny?

To anyone who even tries to pick up this anime, the first thing you need to know is it has no such thing as a serious moment. Almost ever single scene will end up with some sort of joke or random stupid statement/comment. Most of the time the jokes are focused on visual appearance or sex, to the point where it gets a little stupid sometimes. The anime itself even makes fun of itself about it, so at least they know they are doing it.

The basic plot is in a high school where the female students outnumber the male students because it just changed from being all female to co-ed. The main male character is Tsuda Takatoshi who gets dragged into the student council on the first episode. Thus, most of the anime is based around what the student council is doing.

Its a nonsensical slapstick comedy which would probably suit a teenage to early 20's audience with all the sex jokes they make. Its a pretty easy and fast watch so I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys comedy.

The Ratings

Animation
This is probably the best part of the series. The animation is clean, crisp and just in general nice to look at. I'm glad they at least put the effort to make things look nice.

Backgrounds
They don't have too many different scenes, but in most cases they give fairly detailed scenery that adds quite a bit. For instance when they go on a school trip you get fairly good representations of famous spots i.e. Mount fuji or Kinkakuji.

Character sets
They also have quite appealing characters, usually who stay quite consistent and show a great variety of life. I think the only character I really disliked was Hagimura, I get why they added the random loli but I've never been a fan. They do definitely use the characters appearances to great effect for comedic purposes though.

Motion
They have some movement in the series, mainly when they are doing special events. For the most part its quite good and really I have not much to disagree with.

Sound
I enjoyed the most of the sound as well. I think that they had quite a catchy opening and ending tagged along with an OST that made a big presence throughout. But definitely sound effects played the biggest role in the anime. Just having the random noises that characters make allowed the jokes to be that much better.

VA
In general they choose good voices for the actors too. Each character definitely played the role given too them quite well. My favorite VA was Hikasa Youko for Shino. She has done many big roles recently i.e. Maya in Occult Gakuen, Mio in K-on and Junko in Ushiro no Daimaou. In this anime she pulls off the smart, intelligent and outspoken yet perverted role quite well. I think for me the funniest parts of the series were her and Aria making sexual comments in a serious tone hahaha.

Story
So now to the worst parts of the series. This is an event based series that only has one part of it moving "time". Nothing else in the series really matters much at all. You could watch any episode and be alright, you could even watch parts of an episode and be alright. That being said, means that no real story whatsoever exists in this series. Its just a chain of random school events or conversations put together to show the student council life.

Characters
They don't really move the characters much either. The only development that is done is characters accepting each other. Other then that don't expect much else to happen to any characters. They will be the same people from start to finish.

Value and Enjoyment
This series has no values in fact I would have to say it has negative values. I'm sure after watching this the view on Japanese High school student council will be lowered quite significantly even if it doesn't actually represent it. I would not be able to imagine a real student council with the same practices, I mean it looks fun but reality is some it is just .... ridiculous hahahaha. I did enjoy this series though. I laughed quite a bit so I can't really complain too much.

So have fun watching if you do!!