Student Council Officers #13 — Curse of the Tiki God

September 27th, 2010

 

This is why you do not anger the mighty Kalaipahoa.

Impressions:

Definitely one of the better episodes of the series and I’m very happy about how they chose to end the show. I’m not a fan of the liberal use of flashbacks to kick that little sequence off, nor the Magical Girl Mako parody leading to random fourth wall breaking to talk about Deen’s bishie nonsense either, but a series of made-up flashbacks to previous events in the show is a much better choice than forced drama in the eleventh hour. Plus, it provided some of that cohesion that I’m always begging this show to have. See? It takes so little effort to tie all your random stuff together. Ken managed it just fine every week, but then again, Ken actually has testicles. I think Tsuda’s were taken by Hungry Hungry Hippos.

The first half was more or less the same as always though. I was wondering if they were every going to get to the dildo collector in the OP. She got her three minutes of screen time, so I guess that’s that. The art was pretty janky through the first half too, which is actually kind of surprising give the amount of reused footage later in the episode. Suzu in particular seemed to have a bad case of malformed head and chronic stickleg. Overall though, this was definitely one of the most competent ways to end a comedy that I’ve seen out of Japan.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

In the end, I’d call this a very mediocre show. It’s definitely a step up from GoHand’s previous attempt (Princess Lover), but it could have definitely been a lot better with much stronger writing to put all of the disaparate scenes and jokes into an actual episode instead of a 20 minute long series of webshorts. Too much of it feels like it was cobbled together without any actual effort to make it work. The constant smash cuts simply break up the flow of the humor and even completely kill it through confusion when the setting leaps through time and space at random in 15 second intervals.

The characters were the most fun when they were playing around and messing with each other, but since they were all completely one-dimensional, there really weren’t enough of them around to get away with that.  Tsuda was the most disappointing of the bunch though. I feel like his only role was to say "Eh?" and "Really?" Kind of like Mitsudomoe, the first episode was also the best by far. It was cohesive, great visual presentation, and a good soundtrack. Unfortunately, it faded a lot faster, but didn’t bottom out nearly as low. There were usually a few good jokes, but given the shotgun approach, that’s probably not too surprising.

Overall, it’s watchable, but it’s not going to blow you away and definitely pales in comparison to many many other comedies, but the same thing that keeps it from being really good keeps it from being really bad. There’s at least a little bit to enjoy in most episodes that shows you that this could have been so much more than it ended up being with just a little help from a competent editor and a better screenwriter. Of course, that made it nowhere near as much fun to talk about as Princess Lover’s horses chasing trains to fight the Three Stooges terrorists in Japanese France, but hey… maybe this means that GoHands will make a genuinely good show next time. 

Posted in Student Council | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Mesousa says:

    Ugh, this show reminds me of a Seltserberg film, only with just sex jokes, penis jokes and boob jokes.

    The one funny joke I remember is the loli character swearing of a foreigner.

    This makes me wanna watch Seitokai no Ichizon again.

  • Anise_Punter says:

    I feel like Shino and Aria were trying to earn this show a final grade of 69 / 100. It would be very much like them to do so.

  • Yamibakeru says:

    I actually liked the shotgun approach to things in this series. But that’s just me.