Wasteful Days of High School Girls (also alternatively titled in
the singular form Girl) is a
slice-of-life comedy series that follows a freshman class of an all-girls high
school. Each one of them has their own distinctive
quirky personality, and at the start of the school year, Nozomu Tanaka gives
teasing nicknames to her classmates which are based on their respective quirks. These end up sticking on them.
So, the aspiring manga artist
Akane Kikuchi becomes “Wota”; the deadpan, biology geek Shiori Saginomiya
becomes “Robo”; the petite, childlike, naïve Saku Momoi becomes “Loli”; the chunibyo–afflicted Minami Yamamoto
becomes “Yamai”; the tomboy-ish, studious, socially inept Kanade Ninomae
becomes “Majime”; the bashful, occult-obsessed Hisui Kujo becomes “Majo”; and the
pretty, boy-allergic, yuri–loving
Lily Someya becomes, well, “Lily” (the only one whose actual name is apparently
already a fitting nickname). In turn,
the girls get back at Tanaka by nicknaming her “Baka” (Japanese for “idiot”), since
she’s exceptionally stupid and indolent.
Meanwhile, their homeroom teacher
is Masataka “Waseda” Sawatari, who also has his own eccentricities. He is only attracted to girls who are in
college, and is awkwardly outspoken about it.
He’s also secretly the Vocaloid artist Teishotoku-P, whom Wota is an
avid fan of (she’s unaware that Teishotoku-P and Waseda are the same
person). Baka and Yamai are constant
headaches to him.
The characters’ goofy personalities
are simply apt ingredients for some hysterical, outrageous situational
comedy. From the dumbass Baka alone, tons
of material can be mined.
A lot of the hardest-hitting gags
come out of the central trio of Baka, Wota, and Robo, but the focus is never stagnant
on them. The other girls are also given quality
opportunities to have their own shticks and bits, and thus, they can come off just
as memorable to the audience as those three (for the record, my favorite is Loli).
Moreover, the potency of the comedy the girls generate is due to the
terrific chemistry that they share with each other. Regardless of who is or are interacting with
whom, it can be expected from the resulting jokes to hit more than miss.
In relation to this, a winsome
aspect of the girls’ dynamic is that there’s somewhat a sense of relatability
going for it. They savagely roast or
even borderline bully each other a lot.
But regardless of whatever hurt feelings and irritation that come out of
this, they still would choose to hang out with each other. Isn’t that how a high school clique works in
real life? This anime doesn’t have much to
offer in the depth department. But the girls’ amiable, rough friendship – on top of a few uncharacteristically thoughtful moments peppered across the series – serves an adequate amount of that end for the kind of show it is.
In the end, although Wasteful Days of High School Girls is a very funny show, it’s not really as hilarious as I hoped it
would be when I checked it out at the start of the summer season. It made me chuckle a lot, sure, but I wanted a
full-blown laugh riot like Grand Blue
of last year’s summer season (it was for the same reason I picked up Hensuki). It was able to bring me to the brink of
exploding into hearty guffaws, but it was unable to deliver the extra push that
would have finally tipped me over the edge.
Nevertheless, this fact remains: it’s an absolute delight of an anime comedy.
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