This isn’t the real title screen, but this one is more interesting.

Two episode impression

I’ve been craving a good reference-laden comedy for a while. Hayate S2 and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei are still fresh in my memory, but neither really satisfied the craving. Hayate S2 had small flashes of reference-comedy but was otherwise a shadow of the first season with regards to referential humor. Zetsubou Sensei has been slipping since the second season and just doesn’t have the same impact it used to. Seitokai no Ichizon (The Student Council’s Judgment) bills itself as a reference-comedy series, but is it a contender or a pretender?

Reference jokes are certainly plentiful with jabs and parodies of popular shows like Haruhi, Higurashi, Lucky Star, Dragon Ball, Death Note and general eroge, but the jokes lack an intangible thing called punch. I’m not talking about punch lines here, but the jokes haven’t had much impact. They’ve been akin to flat soda — While it’s still soda, it’s flatter than a loli. Putting shameful loli jokes aside, Seitokai was really flat.

I’m willing to forgive comedic shortcomings if the slice-of-life can carry the slack, ala Hidamari Sketch, but none of the characters have much impact or presence. I could attribute this to the fact that the voices of all four female leads are rookies in their first roles. Actually that is a pretty big factor. I won’t fault the seiyuu for being rookies, but you can tell the main girls are rookies. The only girl I can remember is Mafuyu, and that’s only because she’s the token moe character with an oversized ribbon on her head. The rest of the characters don’t strike me as particularly interesting or memorable save for Sugisaki, if only because he’s the otaku character the (otaku) audience is supposed to love.

To be fair, a reference show by the name of Lucky Star also got off to a slow start. As almost everyone will attest, the first four episodes were sub-par before getting awesome. However, LS had the luxury of 24 episodes and could afford a slow start. On top of that all the characters were interesting (yes, even Miyuki too). As a 13 episode show, Seitokai doesn’t have the luxury of time and needed a strong start. It might get better if the jokes get punchier and as the inexperienced seiyuu adjust to their roles. Or it might not. Either way, it’s not like Seitokai is a bad show as is — It’s just not that funny. Seitokai, I am disappoint.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Anime, First Impressions.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.