First Impressions – Ore ga Ojousama Gakkou ni “Shomin Sample” Toshite Gets♥Sareta Ken
Jump up and down on your right foot three thrice while barking. Then click “read more” to make your wish come true….
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Welcome plebeians. If your wish was to read this First Impression, then it has come true! Congratulations! All other wishes are void, unnless they are for more muscle men, because I will make that one come true in due time! |
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So, here we are for Prison School season 2! Well, not really. This time it’s kinda sorta not really voluntary, and if we’re going to talk about a velvet-lined prison, this would be it. |
Senseless and Sensibilities
Kujou (Saori Oonishi) is very welcoming…
Well as far as set-up is concerned this one is a touch more complex than most ecchi comedies. But once you get a handle on the basic situation, it all falls into place. Our male lead, Kimito Kagurazaka (Atushi Tamaru) is just a normal high school kid. So normal, that he falls dead into the sights of an isolated, but wealthy and influential, all girls academy. This school is so exclusive that’s it’s having it’s own sort of #1%problems. When girls graduate, and go off into the real world, they have very little into the way of the day to day experiences, interaction with men being the most pronounced of problems. In a back-handed sort of social commentary, these poor girls become net-addicted shut-ins.
So for this unique problem, they devise a unique solution, and that is to offer a high school boy the opportunity to become a valued teacher and guide for those in need abduct some poor schlub with a bare minimum of sketchy research and haul him by force to the school and then blackmail him the in the worst possible way to do their bidding, which basically devolves to being the commoner guinea pig for a bunch of pampered rich girls. The problems will just solve themselves! Nothing at all possible could go wrong! Every guy loves muscle dudes!
Aika likes solving problems with her head…
But we need the girls to make a harem cast so enter one Aika-sama (Yuu Serizawa). Now, as a reader of the manga, I’ve already gone with her as Best Girl, but in the first episode she only comes off as awkward. She’ll grow out of that in due time. I only wish some of her main antics here had some grounding to it. As of this outing, they made her way to scattered about. Some of the timing between her and Kimito was very off. But the stage is set for the Commoner Club. It won’t stay just her and Kimito for long…
Not an Oh Ho Ho Ho in ear-shot.
The only other character we get from the main four this episode is Reiko Arisugawa (Rika Tachinbana), the stereotypical oujo-sama. If they were able to mine Aika for slapstick and general goofiness, then they were able to go for some very subtle characterization with Reika. I loved that over-extended bit where she gift-wrapped his phone, complete with hand-written note, it payed off to see her hands shaking at the mere thought of getting close to a young man. Her mind didn’t quite know how to take it. But she will recover and give the proceedings some grace. She’s funny in her own sweet way.
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
…there is too much of a good bad thing…(and by the way, wish granted!)
Unlike skylion and some of the other writers here at Metanorn, I don’t know anything about this series besides the basic setup going in (apart from what they keep gushing about, which doesn’t get too specific). So for me, this was the whole introduction to the story. And I have to say that I was less than impressed. The main problem really came down to one word: flow. This premiere didn’t. It went from place to place, but it felt stilted, hesitant, and like it was constantly interrupted.
I’m not one to automatically complain when a show does a pre-epilogue, or even a look-forward, but the one that started off this show really didn’t add anything at all to the show, except adding to the feeling like it was not sure what it wanted to do. It was almost like they were going to start with the whole school introduction to Kimito, and then thought “Oh, wait, we should do this other part first” and then going back and filling in the backstory. It was almost like someone who’s not really good at telling a joke trying to tell a joke, and no matter how good the joke is, it falls flat because the person’s fumbling with it.
…Aika is in a bit of a grey area…
And on top of that, the modus operandi of the show just didn’t lend itself to flowing. First they talk to this girl. Then they talk to this girl. Then they talk to this girl. Add in a few long pauses, and overselling the moments, like Reika walking up to Kimito to give him his phone back, one pair of stocking-clad legs walking through a forest of legs which just felt too long, and it’s just not being funny. I also didn’t really care for Aika… at all. Not that I hated her, but that she just feels like she’s not that interesting. The chemistry between Kimito and Aika felt terrible. Their conversation didn’t even seem interesting to them, and I guess they were trying to make Aika seem kinda pushy, maybe? I dunno. It just didn’t really work as a meeting.
You should be lucky to be lost in this sea…
A few more Samples
…some cheeky official art…
Just In Case You Were Curious….
Final Thoughts
I was hoping for more after hearing about this manga from others, but this first episode felt like it missed a lot of the beats. There were very few jokes that worked, a couple that they tried to hard to sell, like about Kimito’s preferences and Kujou’s disappointment in having to deal with him. and it just felt very flat and uninspired. On top of that, as I said above, it just didn’t flow. I kind of worry that the show will be too much “girl of the week” (or every two weeks) where Kimito helps one girl with some problem. Going by the way this episode went, there was almost no interaction between the girls, and that just felt really bad in this premiere. I hope it gets better, but I worry it won’t.
But, if I’m going to be completely honest, I covered most of the the highlights. As the episode played out, there were some concerns. From manga to anime, a great deal of the basic flow was missing, and the humor that felt natural and developed on the page turned out flat and awkward on the screen. They really didn’t play up the muscle dudes as much originally, but they seem to want to mine that very terrible joke as much as they can in the anime. In the manga it only comes up as a brief reminder every now and then only to keep Kimito “in check” and Kujou in play, but I fear they may over-extend it’s welcome on the show. Still, it’s early days yet, and I’ll give it time to get into gear.
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Delicious beefcake.
Delicious pantsu.
Delicious flatchest. (leave you to decide which one(s)).
Are we going to have metafap this season?
Right now, I think I’m going to do the tried and tested method of picking up shows: OP/ED sampling.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I missed the (disturbing) beefcake image in the OP, my mind must have blurred them out. The episode was mostly a miss for me, although I agree with the gift-wrapping of the phone. It felt ridiculous, but still cute and endearing.
I found the whole I love men muscles a little forced. It’s very clear that he’s not gay, and yet all he has to say is “banzai muscles”, and all of a sudden they’re happy. The principal and maid must be really daft. Hell, if that’s the case he could get away with doing one thing and saying another. The whole thing could be a typical hentai setting.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I wonder if the principal’s thing is that she doesn’t really care how Kimito *really* feels about men or women as long as he plays the part he’s assigned. If he doesn’t, then they’ve wasted a lot of money on a big mistake. So if he’ll go along with it, she won’t say anything. Kujou is a bit more suspicious, but she doesn’t like him anyway.
It reminded me of Three’s Company (for a reference that only 5 of us will get). In that, Jack Tripper told the landlord that he was gay, so that he could room with the two girls. He wasn’t any of the sort, but had to keep up appearances at certain times. It was a plot point that was usually ignored, just brought up rarely for a joke. This one needs to use it rarely as well.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
You’re right, never heard of the show =P
I suppose that is a possibility. But it cost what, $100 million yen to transport his room? I’m sure they could have put some more money into their research. I wonder why his parents sold him off, what was the pay package there?
I’m oddly reminded of a poor man’s version of Outbreak Company.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
It’s OK not to have heard of the show; he and I were both kids when it started back in the 70s. But think of it as a College Humor show from back in the day.
I don’t think the details are that important (yet?), just the authoritative justification, “You didn’t ask for this, but you’re in debt to us anyway…be grateful”.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Well the situation has to have a few more wrinkles than that for it to work. But working isn’t something to worry about. I’ve seen a ton of comments about how it’s “questioning how people put down homosexuality”. But it’s far to broad to do that justification. If anything the broadest part of the comedy and social commentary is, “Oh, that nail is sticking out…why are you letting it bother you so much?”
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Speaking of hentai, I just glimpsed VALKYRIE DRIVE -MERMAID-, and that thing is pretty much soft-core hentai. I didn’t see that coming, but then again I didn’t really do enough research. I was expecting like Senran Kagura or maybe Samurai Girls.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Fosh just posted that FI for that show, head on over and give it your two cents!
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I just saw that, haha. =P
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I do have to say, it feels like at least 75% of my posts are eaten by the spam filter and then someone has to rescue it. Wouldn’t it be easier to implement an authentication system of sorts if spam is that much of an issue?
I’d rather have to type in some matching characters than wait for an indeterminate time for my post to appear. It would also reduce the effort of staff having to review all the spam posts.
POWUH: 800-899 and Mad Scientist with 814 comments
I’ve suggested such things to Kyo before, but I think she said something along the lines of it eating up too much bandwidth.
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
Well, this was… underwhelming. I mean, if I didn’t read the manga, I would think this is good, but having read it, I had so many expectations and so many of them went downhill as soons as the episode started.
First, I think they made horrible choices with character design and VA. Particularly with the MC ones. Whenever I read the manga, I always thought he had a more mischievous personality, as if he was a troll to some degree. Here, when he “trolled” Aika, he kinda sounded apologetic, which sounded weirdly off. Also, I won’t name VAs, because I don’t know much about them, but I’m positive that this wasn’t the right one for this guy. Also, his character design made him a lot meekier than he seems in the manga.
tl;dr: I expected something like Food Wars’ Souma, ended up getting a meekier version of FSN’s Shiro.
Another problem is, I expected a much faster-paced episode. Sure, it’s a private school for super rich and elite girls, but the manga gives off another vibe. The cuts were weird as well, and the BGM was really weak when these crazy things are happening.
So, yeah. Meh. Expected so much more. But I’m goingo to have to settle with this, right?
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
I don’t think you have to settle for anything; last time I checked the manga was still A-OK! I got used to the character design and VAs, they could do much better but they work for the most part.
But the biggest problem was how spaced out it was, you’re right.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Wait, there were crazy things happening in this episode? It could have used more crazy things, that would have meant there was more movement. It felt like they just sucked the air out of any potential crazy stuff with the pauses.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
I just went back and re-read the relevant chapters of the manga. There, the mangaka had a tight control of the panels. By contrast the direction here is pretty loose. The over-all effect was that the scenes with Reika and Aika had a common thread in the male lead. Both had something to in terms of basic character. Whereas in the anime, they just looked “there”. It didn’t really use the scenes to build much; just there as a pre-requisite.
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
It was supposed to be crazy. The way they put it in the episode just sucked the craziness out of it. They somehow made even the scene where he is abducted by the muscle guys not as weird as it could have been.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Yeah, the muscle dude thing is played with more subtlety originally. Here they just assuming dialing it to 11 will make it funnier.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Never watched Food Wars, but a mischievous would have been a great addition. This guy seems like he was a reject from all auditions because he blended into the backgrounds and didn’t stand out, so no one knew he was there to audition.
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
If you think well, that actually would be the right VA for the description of MC, who is supposed to be the epitome of common, “futsuu”. But this is not the character I met in the manga, and that leaves me really frustrated.