ReviewComedy has a lot more power when it has a meaning, a reason to exist. This kind of comedy, however, is quite hard to do and thus rare to find. What we get more commonly is non-sense comedy, where the laughs comes from exaggerated comparisons and behaviors, from funny noises, funny faces, and so on. Children find farting something to laugh about, so having so many simple and meaningless comedies is somewhat expected.
Asobi Asobase is one of those. It is about three girls casually gathering at their club room, which is a club about past time activities. Yes, a club about thinking of something stupid to do in order to make time pass. Hanako is a loud and somewhat lazy girl which happens to actually be smart, Kasumi seems to be smart, but is just a silent girl with troubles to get her scores, and Olivia is a girl born out of Japan trying to hide the fact she spent her life in the country.
- The three girls
The essence of Asobi Asobase hangs on the shoulders of the three major characters. There is no bigger plot to follow, no major theme to tackle, no slice-of-life to explore. This is simply about three girls talking in a room with some special guests at some episodes. The three, however, are mostly fitting to the task.
Hanako: Hanako is the most dividing of the three, winning the most comical scenes, but also becoming very annoying with her yelling and forced behavior. She also gets a great deal of cartoonish faces and is treated with the evidence she is dumb and unaware of most things.
Kasumi: Kasumi could be the most boring of the trio with her fujoshi template and being the girl with massive boobs. She, however, has the most natural behavior and is perhaps the anchor of the show keeping it from going completely astray with the nonsense.
Olivia: Olivia starts with the boring idea of being a girl raised in Japan but trying to act like a foreigner, but she fortunately grows out of it and becomes somewhat the middle term of the trio. She can be a lot more funny than Kasumi, yet she never really gets to the absurdity of Hanako. She, however, is the main star of some of the most comical scenes of the show.
And the support is fun
Sometimes a teacher is thrown into a short tale, sometimes the student council president makes her appearence, there is even Hanako's butler and a student from the occultism club. These guys are always a refresher when joining the main trio, perhaps being the reason Asobi Asobase can stick with us for twelve episodes without becoming too repetitive. These support characters are also recurring and they grow as the episodes move, granting us a sense of development to a show that has no plot whatsoever.
And it's cute
Asobi Asobase may have somewhat three generic girls as far as their character design is concerned, but Lerche did a great job at giving the show an interesting identity with the rough edges, light color palette and noseless characters. The voice-acting contributes a lot at making the girls funny, but as mentioned, Hanako can get out of hand at many points with unecessary yelling and grunts. Overall this is a simple, yet efficient production for a mindless comedy.
CommentsThe lack of plot and meaning certainly makes Asobi Asobase step out of being amazing, but the innate comedy it presents is satisfying, simple, and sometimes even spot on. You get a format with short tales, yet there is a sense of progression and timeline which helps to give the three girls and guest characters a tiny bit of development.
It could be said this is like a Non Non Biyori within a school, or maybe a Minami Ke limited to a club room, yet Asobi Asobase has a deal of identity to its mindless comedy. It could be helped with a major plotine, certainly, but what it does with its limited tools is simply amazing.