3ET: Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku

"Hi, we're looking for the good show about cute girls doing cute things."
"Oh, that's not us, try the light music club."

Studio: Nomad

Director: Satou Hikaru (Debut)

Main Cast: Kido Ibuki as Andou Natsuki, Kobayashi Miharu as Doumyouji Sakura, Senhongi Ayaka as Kokonoe Claire, Aiuchi Sae as Oohagi Botan, Yuuna Mitsuki as Touno Karin

Writer: Zappa Gou (Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi, Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru!)

Music: Sakabe Go (Date a Live)


I could easily continue on the discussion of how comedy is subjective from my previous post. That's because Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku is aimed at a specific audience, which is not me. That's why I failed it. However, there is another aspect of anime that I want to address here, that is how experience can both influence and predict the quality of a show. And in the case of what I didn't like about, um, how should I shorten this, KitaKatsu, sure that works, I think that a lot of it can be chalked up to poor execution from inexperience or just plain incompetence.

Let's start with the director. Yes this is his debut as a full-blown director of a show, although he's directed episodes of many different shows in recent years. And his inexperience comes through in several areas. First is the voice direction. He barely allows any time to let the show breathe, as every joke is immediately followed by Natsuki (the straight man) screaming how strange every wacky situation is. After one episode, it was annoying. After three episodes, it was just noise. There was also a lack of imagination in the setting of the show, as 90% of it takes place in the club room. Although, that may have been a decision by the studio in an attempt to save money. He does have one interesting visual moment though, where the show goes super-low budget, basically animating storyboards, to show how the rich girl views money. It kinda works, which is more than I can say for the rest of the show.

When in doubt, go super deformed.

I think readers will also notice the lack of hotlinks for four of the five main girls' voice actresses. That would be because those four are debuting in voice work with this show. And I'm not surprised at all having watched three episodes.. None of them sound distinctive and they all just fall into the comfortable rut of their character archetypes. There's the rich girl, the idiot, the martial artist, and the cute one. That's literally all that we know about them, and all of the comedy that is there comes from these types playing off of each other in a way that has been seen dozens, if not hundreds, of times before.

Now, the writer has done some work before. Unfortunately, pretty much everything he has done has been crap. I did not finish either of the other shows he wrote this decade, mostly because I found them to be dull and predictable. The main problem, aside from his work again being dull and predictable, is that he relies too much on making a reference and thinking that alone is a suitable joke. Can this work? Rarely, yes. More often than not it comes across as lazy and uninspired.

A decade old Dragonball Z joke! The kids will love it!

And yeah, I'm gonna close by saying that's what I felt this show was, lazy and uninspired. It takes a lot of effort to make a show about cute girls doing cute things be interesting in 2013. The staff and cast of KitaKatsu fail to do that. Now, part of that may be that I just didn't get the comedy, but I could stick around if the show was doing something interesting besides the comedy. Which it doesn't.