Seitokai Yakuindomo Review

I apologize that it’s been so long since I last posted an anime review. Three months ago was my last to be exact. Well, things have been pretty hectic that my blog time was not the only thing that was being constantly sacrificed, but my watch and play time as well (I haven’t even finished FFXIII-2 yet >.). Now that I have more time now since a big project just finished, let me make you up for it with Seitokai Yakuindomo!

Plot: Literally translating to ‘Student Council Staff Members‘, Seitokai Yakuindomo starts with the cliched ‘protagonist on his first day of high school’ scenario. Osai Academy, which just turned co-ed from an all-girls school, is where Takatoshi Tsuda enrolled in – not for the delusional harem other hormone-influenced guys want to have, but simply because it’s close to his house. Upon entering the gate, he is stopped by the school’s Student Council President (Kaicho) Shino Amakusa and then the following scenes take place:

Osai Student Council President Amakusa Shino

Freshman Takatoshi Tsuda

The other student council members then introduce themselves: Secretary Aria Shichijou, who has a motherly and Ojou-sama (rich and well-mannered lady) air about her, and Treasurer Suzu Hagimura, who looks like an elementary kid but compensates with her 180 IQ and multilingual talents.

After all is said and done, the conversation suddenly turns to the student council needing a male staff member for the sake of having the perspective of a guy since the school just turned co-ed that year. So yeah, Tsuda was forcefully made the school’s Vice President on his first day of school.

See the screencap above? That’s no subtitle typo. Aria really said that. And this is where the anime takes its turn from the cliched to being unique – a green and perverted kind of unique, that is. From here on out, two of the girls would be constantly making unprecedented green jokes, having Tsuda play the role of the straight man.

As it turns out, the oh-so perfect Amakusa Shino is a pervert at heart despite her being the school’s flawless role model and president, and would blurt out toilet-humored puns whenever possible. And Aria? She’s much worse. Suzu sympathizes with Tsuda at the least, although she mentions that she’s gotten used to it already.

This kind of anime is somewhat refreshing to me, since I haven’t watched anything yet where female characters can make such sexually obscene remarks with a straight face, as if it’s totally natural to say so.

You might think guys should be happy about this, right? And that the main character Tsuda shouldn’t try so hard to act cool and play the straight man? Normally, that should be the case. But the level of perverseness of the nuts here are so severe that even men with the dirtiest minds would consider the punchlines wrong on so many levels lol. Well, this is mainly because they try to insert sexual innuendo to every mundane conversation they have.

Most of the time, Shino and Aria talk to Tsuda as if he’s the perverted one, and that they already accepted him as one. But in truth, he’s a nice mature guy who has more important things to do than think about sex. This is where most of the jokes start – Tsuda making an ordinary remark such as “This DVD was great, you can’t finish it without using tissue.” then one would go and say “It’s THAT erotic??” Lol.

For the record, they aren’t totally perverted per se, as they’re mostly limiting things verbally. So I guess there’s an unwritten rule that they’re just doing this for fun. You can say they’re in it just for the sake of the jokes and nothing more. This is proved at scenes where there’s a romantic tension between Shino and Tsuda, and she just blushes and shies away at the slightest hint of conversation. As student council members, Aria and Shino are usually serious and implement the strict rules of the school as deemed necessary.

There was one time when Tsuda would be at the point of fantasizing about the girls (accompanied with a scene from your typical ecchi fanservice anime in his head), then they would just say something much more inappropriate that’s beyond his imagination, to his surprise. Well, you can’t beat girls who’s more perverted than you.

And this is what makes Seitokai Yakuindomo what it is – an anime made to be perverse, but VERY light on visual fanservice. They just rely on wits and puns to deliver the jokes, which is a challenging thing to do for the writers.

The plot is very light in itself since the anime would mostly revolve on student council activities we all see in other high school-themed anime: class sessions, sports festival, cultural festival, Christmas and New Year’s celebration, summer vacation, field trips, etc. So it’s basically just those cliched scenes packed with a rather overdosed amount of sexual perversity usually rebutted by either the ethical, naive or fellow maniacal characters who are on a different level of wrong.

I must say I enjoyed this 13-episoded anime, and the hilarity it brings certainly relieved some of the stress I had from work. No deep stories or ethical dilemmas to ponder about, it’s just a plain and simple anime that helps you build abs via making you laugh every other minute. ‘Funny’ is subjective, though. If you’re the type who gets offended easily, this is obviously not your cup of coffee. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this review.

I now end this review with a scene that totally cracked me up:

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