Anime Corps

I remember last month when I was scrolling through AniChart while on a Skype call with my girlfriend trying to decide what I wanted to watch and what the one show I wanted to review was. Overall I was just looking at studio names, picking up Charlotte and Fate/Illya 3, but I couldn’t decide what show I wanted to watch until I saw an anime cover with lolis plastered all over it. Yes, admittedly that’s what got my attention. However, after reading the synopsis I excitedly exclaimed that this was anime of the year along with being the one show I’d review. Now here we are! Let’s get started on this review now, shall we?

Cute loli main character? Check. Adorable pet dog? Check. YuruYuri-esque opening song and sequence? Check. What could go wrong? This show follows the everyday life of the adorable main character Yuki Takeya as she both goes to school and lives there. Yuki is a member of the School-Live club, a club at school who lives in the school in order to “become acquainted with a wide variety of activities as well as foster independence and provide an example to others.” I’m personally not too sold on the idea that you have to live at school in order to achieve those things, but whatever floats their boat works.

Bonus points for the main character sharing my name.

The visual side of the show overall wasn’t very stunning until the very end of the episode; even then I would call the move the show pulled more of a sharp change in tone and pushing that point home by abusing the visuals. The music followed this same trend as it was rather stereotypical and forgetful up until the very end when the music makes a distinct change fitting the tone perfectly. The way that this show executed this tone change was flawless in my opinion, and while I understand the importance of keeping the two tones drastically different, it wouldn’t hurt to make the initial tone have a more memorable soundtrack and a little stand-out visuals considering that that the show as proven it’s capable of that in the last few minutes of the first episode. But for all I know that will be implemented in the near future.

As of now I’d like to warn everyone: from this point forward there will be spoilers. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, I highly advise that you go and watch it now before continuing to read this review however you may exercise discretion however you feel fit. By far the strongest aspect of this show is the fact that we’re following around a character that is entirely oblivious to the fact that she’s living in a zombie apocalypse. When the reveal at the end of the episode finally showed up this show’s value sky-rocketed. This brings in all sorts of opportunities for several things that could go wrong and overall the more I thought about every single possibility the more excited I got.

This seriously blew my mind.

I’m personally hoping that this show will continue to play its cards well. The amount of potential that it has is insane and hopefully nothing messes up. There could be moments when the group get separated from Yuki while she’s in danger and the group tries to find a way to her fast before the zombies find her, there could be moments where something tragic happens and Yuki can’t realise that something sad happened, there are endless possibilities and I’m hoping the story pulls out ones I can’t guess. Part of me doesn’t think I was very wrong in saying this was anime of the year.

Bonus picture hype. (Pixiv link)

Well now I’m super excited for next week. As always, if you’d like to see what I’m up to when I’m not doing my part for this blog you can follow me on Twitter! I’m super excited to be reviewing this show and I hope all of you are as excited for it as I am. See you all next week with another review!

-Tsuyuki Arumaya