Anime: Gokujou Seitokai

“What the hell is that puppet?” that was my first reaction when I saw the promotional image in animeDB, and this is also the only reason why it attracted me to download the first episode. After the first episode, I was drawn into the show ever since. (Contain spoilers)

Animation:

The overall animation is fine and simple. The style of bright colours, simple character designs and plain background actually complimented this show’s main theme, it is about friendship and have fun. The only complain I have on the animation is the characters’ faces. They somehow look more like boys or men than girls, it might be just me, but once you look closer at how they drawn the eyes, the face and the nose, it does feature some similarity to many anime male (or cross gender one in most cases) characters. But that’s purely my opinion, I don’t think it destroyed the show, but it just seems rather odd. To the graphics, I absolutely loved the opening theme song graphics and especially the ending theme song graphics. I found that the character design graphics there was much nicer, although a little bit on the fan serve side.

Sound:

The OP and EP, as well as background music are fine. The simple, cheerful music matches with the theme, so no complains there. For voices, most are well suited for the roll, but I do fine that some of them to be rather bizarre, especially for those one off only support casts. Also Rino voice (the main character) can be sometime a bit annoying and over the top.

Characters:

Probably the main problem of the show, there are simply too much characters being introduced, and they just comes and goes without much development. However, for most of the main characters, there are substantial developments so you really get to know them. Even though with these developments, the characters are still very weak. This is probably due to stereotypical character developments, so it can become tedious to watch. However, the most unique and somewhat surprising development was the puppet, which its purpose and history was revealed right at the end. Also, some of the characters and their actions are a bit silly, like using a yoyo as a weapon for example, nevertheless, some of these characters and jokes are still funny enough to be appreciated as a light comedy entertainment.

Story:

What can I say, the story is plain and simple, the theme is to do things that are enjoyable and make school life fun. This is a rather typical theme that can be found on many anime, and to be honest, it is fairly fan served. The stories are, as expected, episode based with a theme being finish in 1 to 2 episodes. Although most of the stories were rather predictable, they did manage to think of some interesting theme for some of episodes, so it is less boring to watch. Also, there is no substantial plot development until the last few episodes, so it seems a bit rush, not to mention the ending was incomplete, and in many ways, disappointing.

Enjoyment and value:

I think this show is fine, definitely not bad or outstanding in any particular way. It has many silly characters that sometimes can be funny and sometimes can be annoying. The storyline is plain and ordinary for most part of the show. However, they didn’t have any major stuff up, and some of the jokes are genuinely funny, so I guess they still should deserve some merit of successfully completed a fine series. If you are expecting something funny with strong plotline and characters, you should stay clear of this show, but if you are looking for mindless, light hearted entertainment, this is a fine series to watch.

Gokujou Seitokai is a bit silly, a bit touching at times, fairly amusing, and definitely free of content or intelligence. With that said, it's still a fun lighthearted romp.

Summary: Randou Rino's mom died and now her pen-pal has engineered a way for her to go to an elite private high school. On her first day there, she's elected class representative, and then chosen as the secretary for the school's student council. Except this isn't any normal student council - this is Gokujou Seitokai. What normal student council would have Assault and Covert divisions? I wish mine had, it would have made council meetings a lot less boring!

Animation: The animation for this show is absolutely perfect for the content. It's bright and cheerful and almost always in motion. The character designs are well done, and there aren't any exaggerated proportions. In fact, there's a marked lack of any fanservice in this show - which is a rarity for a all-girls-high-school anime, regardless of the target audience!

The opening deserves special notice here - it's perfectly suited for the show, displaying every single character with their name. The main characters are shown in a trading-card style which is rather amusing, considering the content of one of the later episodes.

Sound: The opening track fits the series so well, it's a shame that the rest of the sound doesn't quite live up to it. The first ending is ok, but the second one just doesn't fit at all. The voice actors range from good to weird (Cindy, anyone?), and Rino's seiyuu does one of the very best little-girl-crying imitations I've ever heard. A little annoying, a little heartbreaking, but you can't help but snicker every time she bursts into tears.

Story: Story? Gokujou Seitokai is episodic and there's no real plot line. Sure, there's some halfass "omg some of the girls have SPESHUL POWERS!" thing that gets dealt with at the end, but it's never a focus of the show. That is a good thing, as it's hokey to the point of painfulness. As for the episodic plots, most of them are light fluffy and absolutely forgettable.

Character: I've avoided talking about Pucchan so far because he is the only character that redeems the cast. Well, him and Landlady. Pucchan is a puppet that Rino wears constantly, and who has more volition than anyone actually realizes. One does have to wonder if he's actually the main character and not Rino. Rino herself is one of those main characters whose main role seems to be motivating the other characters to do interesting things without being interesting herself. In that case, they designed her perfectly.

The rest of the cast is fairly stereotypical. If you've seen any high school anime, you've seen most of these girls. The Landlady, however, is absolutely cute and absolutely hilarious. Who can resist an 11-year old girl whose vocabulary is 90% "Eheh!"

Value: I can't say as this show is worth much. You're never going to want to watch it again, and you're certainly never going to want to buy it, and you're not going to show it off to people as a highlight of your collection. However, it's a good show to bring you up if you're feeling down. I recommend saving this show for a rainy day (or week) and just absorbing the zany cheerfulness.

Enjoyment: I honestly enjoyed Gokujou Seitokai. It's not the best funny high school show ever - if you want that, go watch Azumanga Daioh for the 19th time - but it's good. It's funny. And it doesn't involve a lot of thinking. Enjoy it. It's Gokujou.

A waste of time, but an enjoyable waste of time.


Animation: Regular animation, with cute girls and an optimistic atmosphere.

There is no real outstanding animation, but although it has just regular animation and nothing exceptional, they managed to animate the series to reflect the ultimate positive feeling. With the protagonist being Randou Rino, the series emits a sort of gullible, naive sort of happiness and positiveness which can sometimes be sheer annoying, but it is sort of a wonder they could create characters, colors and environments which were actually able to reflect this feeling. Therefore the animation is not detailed, not flawless and not impressive, but instead it's just being happy and colorful instead.

Character Design
Add the fact that the characters (nearly all girls) look quite nice - no exaggerated looks, like Z-cups for breasts, but rather like in shoujo-series, where they are displayed as normal girls with normal breasts (which might sometimes be quite non-existant, as with real 14 year olds). Still, the girls look good, attractive and refreshing.

OP/ED Animation
They also did a nice job on the OP/ED: in the OP they add some extra scenes right after they have introduced a new character and it is kind of fun to see all main characters (about 15) getting all a little personal shot during the OP (with the puppet :) ) The ED is exceptional though; they display a couple of main characters as if they were playing in a Bishoujo-game, which means that they've spent much more time on drawing them. One might say they're art paintings instead of just animations.

Sound: Lots of annoying voices, but somehow doesn't disturb the atmosphere.

The main character might have the most annoying voice of the series and while one doesn't always get used to some of them, they do fit their characters.
I want to point out one character though. Throughout the entire series Cindy speaks English all the time, with only a 1 or 2 exceptions. But not only is that not annoying, the dialogues for her are often funny and the way she speaks English (usually only 1-2 words as a sentence) are fun to hear.
The OP-song is happy and fun, which suits the series pretty much and also the ED-song is quite nice to hear, although one does need to like that particular sort of music.

Story: Episode-stories, with some good, some not so good and some plain annoying episodes.

The series has episode-stories, so every episode is a story by itself again. Often there are no specific things which are dragged over several episodes, except for a few. And even those don't always seem that important, because the series strives on the ‘happy-go-lucky’-feeling. While the series does have the occasional emotional story, they never drag on long enough and always tries to still reflect the positive feelings.

Although it might not seem like it, there really is a ‘main story’ and they actually manage to make a decent story near the end of the series. It still feels like it is just a happy story, but this time it has major impact on the series. I have to warn you though; the main story and the ending still leave so many plotholes that it feels like you can hardly take it serious. But then again, the entire series is like that, so what's new?

There are a few episodes which are truly horrible and there are a few episodes which are too silly to sit through, but most of the time these episodes are pretty nice waste-of-time episodes. If you have nothing to do, or don't know what to watch, this is a great way of filling that time.

Characters: 10? 15? 20? How many characters does this series have?!

If there's one thing this series gets props for, it will probably be the numerous characters making an appearance and of which nearly all of them leave at least enough of an impression to at least remember their names. Although the reason for that could also be the fact that they're all mentioned by name and appearance during the OP-song.

Rino is quite the annoying main character, really. She's clueless, useless, worthless and she has a puppet stuck on her hand for the entire show. And of all the characters, that puppet is actually the best character of the series o_O; He's funny, he surprises you all the time and every now and then he sprouts out something which is actually pretty good. At times you wonder whether the puppet is the main char and Rino only a stick-man. Or woman, in this case.

And while there are several other characters who are only there for comic relief (about the entire crew, really) they do their jobs. And do their jobs well, because the show never gets really serious. The two-three times that they do access a sort of serious subject, it doesn't feel serious either; there's just nobody laughing and cracking jokes anymore.

Value : Perhaps if you're depressed you should be forced to watch this?

I have been thinking plenty before I decided to answer this, but I don't see any reason why anyone would actually want to rewatch this. Perhaps someone has a favorite episode, but other than that this series isn't funny enough to rewatch and other than being funny it has no value whatsoever.

Enjoyment

Sure, this series is quite enjoyable if you manage not to find a character who you truly hate. That might be a bit hard, seeing there are about 15 (or so) characters which make an appearance every episode and every character has her own annoying characteristics. Yet, the series as a whole is pretty enjoyable. I almost dare to say that everyone who watches the series has one or more favorite girls in the series as well.