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The comparisons to teekyuu are obvious, both shows focus on cute girls doing tennis things. In fact, the only reason I know about this show is that I love teekyuu and Softenni is recomended as similar.
What I don't see this show campared to is hidamari sketch, which is surprising because the similarities in direction, sound design, pacing, tone and bgm instantly jumped out at me. (maybe these wouldn't be so obvious to someone who isn't as obsessed with hidasketch as I am). Anyway I looked into it and unsurprisingly found that the director was Ryouki Kamitsubo,who directed some episodes of hidamari sketch season 1.
I enjoyed the first episode, more fanservice heavy than I expected but that doesn't bother me.
Surreal comedy deadpan girl archetype is always a plus in my book. See also ichijou from pani poni dash, mai minakami from nichijou, kisaragi ninomai from happy lesson.
blonde girl a cute
lore??
My computer overheated for some reason lol.
i should watch aim for the ace...
This episode is absolutely hilarious. Also, boobs.
You know, this show actually looks really good. The animation quality is higher than you'd generally expect from a lowkey late night cute girls comedy fansirvice show (trust me, i've watched them all). I mean, it's no k-on or nichijou but it's definitely in the upper 50% for this kind of show. The character designs are simple yet effective, with each design being distinct and expressive of that character's personality, while all fitting together cohesively. The show has a general "flat" style to it, including the background art where texture is often superceded by block color with the occaisional manga style half tone effect. All of this lends the show a unique style which I find quite appealing.
This show has a seemingly endless supply of neat characters to pull out at any moment. The neighboring school group are cool. I like the girl who looks like a beetle.
Not sure how I feel about some of the more dramatic parts
what else has studio xebec even done. To love ru? I didn't really care for it. Oh they did the shuffle! adaptation, I was reading that vn a little bit. I should watch ladies vs butlers. Wait they did bottle fairy? cool. You should watch bottle fairy btw.
the leo crossdressing was unexpected
comically large racket is extremely funny.
i wonder if i can finish this show before i fall asleep
what is even happening in this show any more (not a complaint).
I think i'll stop here for today and get some sleep.
and we're back.
as you can tell i got kind of lost at episode 8 but it's not just me the show is very wacky in terms of plot. A second ago they were in some sort of underground facility in the mountains for like 2 episodes and i forgot this was a show about tennis.
the eye catches in this show are really good.
splitting this up per-episode was a bad idea, it feels like I have to say something about each episode, which I do not. Any show i'm going to live gemlog I'm going to have the most to say at the start and after the end, so in future I will not format posts like this.
I like this new girl's floof hair.
I used to play tennis as a kid. I don't think I was ever any good at it, but then I dont really know because I only ever realy played with the coach. I don't remember how I did on the few occaisions I played against other kids. Probably not very well I'd guess. Still, I wonder if the muscle memory is still there, I should go to the tennis court with a friend and see what happens. Although I am now fat and old, so maybe I'll have a heart attack and die. Dying of a heart attack while playing tennis is a very bourgoise way to go.
You may notice the image at the top of this page. I made a very small low quality jpeg, had to learn how to use imagemagick for the first time. I think it's a bit boring to have just text, but I want to keep filesizes small for various reasons. Might not be worth the effort to keep doing that in future, but we'll see.
Oh it's a beach episode, surprised it took them this long to get to.
that was a fun beach episode / lore episode. It's weird how this show actually can do drama when it wants to. You hear about dramatic anime tone shifts from non-otaku but once you've watched a couple hundred shows you kind of stop noticing that stuff as being out of the ordinary, still in this show it's even more apparent than normal I'd say, although maybe in a bit of a different way than you'd normally think. So far most of the drama has been romance stuff which was pretty weak in my opinion, but getting into character backstories I think it works. Anyway the tone shifts here are somewhere between, "doing drama so you can undercut it with an absurdist punchline" and your standard anime dramatic tone shift affair, and this vibe is accentuated by softenni's fast pace.
well that was a nice and wholesome ending to the show. I'll give my more fleshed out thoughts after I talk about the:
lumping them all here since they're just 3 minutes each.
yoo cow lore. Also, boobs.
obscure refferences to real life japanese things I don't understand. Also, boobs
yooo boob lore.
As far as cgdct goes, Softenni definitely leans towards the comedy side moreso than pure slice of life, not that that's a bad thing since the show's comedy is generally good. I found at least 2 good jokes per episode which is better than can be said about a lot of anime comedies. around episodes 8 through 10 it gets a little lost in the sauce, where the level of absurdism and large cast makes it kind of hard to follow, although that may have just been because i was half asleep watching it. I think this show is pretty overlooked, given the quality i'd expect it to have maintained a niche fanbase but you never hear anyone talking about it. While it's certainly a step down from the greats of the genre, well I've already watched all the greats of the genre (almost all) and on the next tier down I think this is worth recomending. Of course, softenni goes pretty heavy on the fanservice, I think it qualifies as an echi show, so if you're not into that you're gonna have a bad time here. The moe elements are certainly there, but they take a back seat to the comedy, which I think it a bit of a shame because if episodes 11 and 12 are anything to go by, the show can hold itself up just having these characters intereact and slice of life their way through a day. Am I going to give numbered scores to shows here? I don't really like numbered scores as a concept for reviewing, but I also feel obligated to add one on MAL so I guess I'll say one, but don't take it too seriously. I'd probably put this at a strong 6 to a light 7, let me think. Well according to MAL 6 is "fine" and 7 is "good", and this is definitely in the "good" camp, so we'll go with a 7. Pretty fun show overall.
