Anne-Happy

krofire May 1, 2022

6

Silver Link’s dire 2016 seinen-comedy concerns five girls attending mysterious class 1-7 at the elite Tennomifune Academy for girls. We are sure this looked really great on paper but it really failed to translate up to the small screen.  The problem is that it is all so pointless and bewildering. The girls of class 1-7 have been streamed off because they are “unfortunate”. The purpose of the class will be to teach them to achieve happiness. Right from the get-go, the story fails on its own terms as soon as you realise that A) the girls are not really that unlucky, and B) the girls are not even unhappy. Add this to the fact that nothing their sadistic teachers do for them does anything to resolve, either their alleged bad luck, nor their unhappiness. The school just sets the girls up in increasingly expensive-looking games in which the staff get to humiliate them. Throw in a stupid miniature robot rabbit and you have an utter car-crash of an anime. Titular character Anne Hanakoizumi is the happiest girl alive and seemingly oblivious to the fact that she keeps falling into rivers and meeting other, highly-unlikely, misfortunes. She is joined by Ruri Hibarigaoka whose only claim to fame is that she has an unusual crush on a cartoon man on a construction sign. She is deeply embarrassed by this but almost nobody else seems to care. Then there is Botan Kumegawa, she is from a wealthy family and her misfortune is that she hurts herself really easily hence caries around a first aid kit to treat herself. She gets rather hung up on things and revels in self-hate at times. Next up is Hibiki Hagyuu – a somewhat rude and arrogant girl with absolutely no sense of direction. She exudes self-confidence but is always let down by the fact that she is not as good at anything as she thinks she is. Finally, we have sleepy Ren Ekoda, a very pretty girl who exudes a strange animal-magnetism that attracts the female of any species. She walks around with small fluffy animals clinging to her which doesn’t seem to bother her at all. Her only claim to ill-fortune is that she is Hibiki’s best friend since childhood and just gets in trouble by association. It is a great bunch of characters but the irritating lack of story lets this down a whole lot. There is a bit of back story and the girls get into a few scrapes and adventures. There is some creepy girl pulling the strings behind the scenes of the school, but the anime ends before any of this suggested-enigma is cleared up. We never do really learn the purpose of class 1-7 leaving the slim plot look exceedingly average. Teenage girls have fun. Typical of the genre. Mediocre. The end. Bye bye.

iforinsignificant Jun 19, 2021

6

This show was a lot like constipation... not the most attractive beginning to a review, I know, but hear me out; what I mean to say it that it was pretty hard to get through especially at the start but by the end it kind of gave me a satisfied feeling. A lot of the earlier episodes didn't really go anywhere and felt like a waste of time to be honest. The characters were unique enough and I wanted to know more about what the hell was going on but it never really felt like I would find anything out and all the weirdness, which was rather interesting, would be wasted. In the end it kind of was but I hope there is a point to all of this eventually because there are makings of a pretty interesting story concept here. The main problem, which is a bit of a spoiler, I suppose, is that the MC's mother had similar schooling and it hasn't seemed to change anything for the better for her which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. There's more than a few other problems here such as the MC being a bit too optimistic. I'm all for looking at the glass half full but you gotta draw the line somewhere and she doesn't seem to have any concept of that. She'd be happy if there was a tiny little droplet about to fall off the glass which causes me to be anxious about her mental well being. Although it is somewhat negated by her being rather observant of her friends' emotional states. The damned tsundere character can be very infuriating as pretty much the only one that is worse off because of her nature is herself and yet she would not let herself overcome that disability and get nice things. The denial is strong in her but not as much as the MC. The luck thing also goes cartoonishly overboard most of the times and sometimes leads to life-threatening situations which I mention nonchalantly because the show also treats them as such. Another major gripe I have is with the art style; it has that bright glare thing that seems to be extremely popular in anime these days especially with the cute girls' genre which is painful to look at really. Otherwise the animation was quite good and the sound was pretty well done. The plot is weird and intriguing enough to pull one through but I wouldn't blame you if you dropped it because it takes like 8 episodes to really get good. The characters are unique and their silly quirks are entertaining except for the tsundere which should be enough but I wanted more. I was satisfied by the end but there is potential here for a much better story going forward. The thing is I know better than to expect good things. Still, I suppose I can recommend this but I don't expect everyone to make it to the final episode.

YuiYui Jun 23, 2016

6.8

Warning this Review May Contain Spoilers- Time for a Spring 2016 anime review and really this was one of the most underrated series of the season, yeah at first you are probably under the impression that this is another cute girls do stuff and that is pretty much what it is but it is worth watching. So it follows a group of girls who are really unlucky doing things that is suppsed to improve their karma but it doesn't really go to plan. STORY The story is simple but fun to watch, there were some episodes that were stronger in story compared to others but each have a unique feel to them. Like I said most episodes consists of the main 5 females doing cute things to improve their karma so some people may get bored but I believe this series has a bit of something for everyone.  ANIMATION The animation is alright, there were quite a few instances that could of been improved. Some parts I would of liked a bit more detail, other times I found the animation flowed kind of strangely and there is also the fact that it isn't very unique (being kind of like your typical moe style). Finally in this section, I thought the character designs were quite fitting and I'm quite glad that they didn't stray far from the manga designs (which I managed to buy the first volume of). SOUND Sound was all good from me, the characters voices fitted them and all were different- no character really sounded 'similar'. The opening was cute and fluffy and really enjoyable, I also felt like the song really represented the show quite well- this is the same as the ending for me. The insert songs as well were quite sweet and added extra cutenness to the series. I also wanted to mention the piano version of the opening in the final episode which I thought was a nice peaceful way to finish off. CHARACTERS Now the characters, I do admit that they aren't the most unique and follow kind of typical character tropes but I still found them pretty likeable. I do admit when Hibiki was introduced I found her quite annoying, but once again she is a character I grew towards. A bit more character development for certain characters (especially that blonde kid from the opening) would of been good but I guess we won't get another series :p So I guess I just have to use the manga to answer my questions. -AngelBeatsYui-