Greetings all, as the supposed resident anime expert here at TSL, I’ve let a lot slip through the cracks due to crazy amounts of laziness, and let’s face it, a certain amount of sobriety.  Was I not drunk enough?  Was I too drunk?  We’ll leave that up to your imagination.  What shouldn’t be left in the realm of uncertainty is how great Asobi Asobase is.

To start with, this show looks like your standard, boring, slice of life that any anime fan worth their salt has seen a million times, right?  Oh, that’s just what these devious devils want you to think!  In fact, if you watch the opening sequence, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to think.

I’ll admit, I don’t know very much Japanese.  Just enough to get me into, and sometimes out of trouble.  But from what I can tell, that OP is nothing but innocence and typical SOL sugary goodness.  So you go into this anime expecting that, and somewhere in the first episode, like 10 minutes in, you’re in for a rude awakening.  Sure, this starts off as all sweet, sugary high school life of “Oh hey, let’s start an after school club!” But it quickly forgets whatever premise it ever had and completely devolves into “Let’s make these girls as effed up as we possibly can!”  I’d tell you the premise of this anime, but it seriously has no premise.  It’s hilarity done strictly for the sake of hilarity.  You’d still like some kind of starting point you say?  Ok, here’s the premise they initially start us with.  Hanako is a bored rich girl who wants to form a club to play games.  Kasumi is a girl who is terrible at English, whose sister always beat the crap out of her at games without mercy and has a complex about that.  Olivia is a girl who looks like a foreigner (something strange and mysterious to Japanese apparently) yet was born and raised in Japan and doesn’t know a lick of English.  Kasumi joins the club because she expects Olivia to tutor her in English.  Olivia joins because she thinks she can fool Kasumi, and also because she thinks Hanako is an idiot and likes making fun of her.  Hanako turns out to be the smartest member of the club.  Absolutely none of that matters past episode 2.  Hanako is borderline genius, Olivia gets exposed, Kasumi, well she’s got a lot more going on that just being poor at English.

As we watch further into the show, we get hit with full on craziness. How crazy could it be might you ask?  Well, one of the more normal segments revolves around Hanako’s butler? Maeda revealing that prior to joining her household he was a homeless man who was abducted by aliens and anal probed with a laser device inserted into him.  Yes, he shoots lasers out of his ass.  And it’s viewed as totally normal.

And I did say that was one of the tamer scenes, yes?  I’d be remiss if I didn’t share with you one of my favorite scenes I’ve seen so far.  If you need some sort of setup, I guess I’ll give it to you.  Essentially the girls are forced to sneak into the office of the student council president by someone who may or may not be a guy pretending to be a girl (totally is, no question about it) and they have to steal a certain file that contains information that this guy would rather not get out into the open, even though most of it is about the three girls in question.  Anyways, this is the penultimate scene.

This is the kind of humor you’re in for with this show.  If you didn’t find that hilarious, then this show isn’t for you.  I’m not judging (I’m totally judging) but that’s OK.

Finally, I gotta say, the ending theme to this is probably the best ED I’ve ever seen in an anime.  Ever.  But definitely for this season.  First off, I’ll share with you the ending theme that we get to see after each episode.

Totally different theme from the OP, right?  I think it’s great how they go from a sugary sweet opening theme to this total metalcore ending.  Gives the right balance between what you expect from the description, and what you actually get from the show.  I should mention that both the OP and ED are sung by the main three girls on the show.  Also, I really want to share with you all the full version of that song since I feel they really do a fantastic job of it.

To me, the amazing part is that none of the three main actresses, Hina Kino (Hanako), Konomi Kohara (Kasumi), Rika Nagae (Olivia) have ever really starred as the main voices in any show prior to this, yet they really come across to me as veterans in the industry.  Just the way they interact with each other and totally own their roles is something you’d only expect from long time veterans.  These are girls that I think we’ll be hearing a lot from the in the future in the anime business.

This offering from Rin Suzukawa is easily the best comedy I’ve ever had to recommend on this site.

Ultimately, this is a show that is much greater than anything anyone could say about it.  Comedy is super subjective, but if you don’t find this funny at least 80% of the time, it’s time to  play some Operation and have your funny bone checked.