Osomatsu #02 — Work Makes You Free
October 12th, 2015
THAT IS NOT A THING TO SAY FOR A RESPECTABLE WORKPLACE!
Impressions:
Not unexpected, but the first episode was not indicative of the production or effort this series would be getting, only in the sense that half the jokes needed to be shouted and the other half executed, then explained that what they just said or did was ridiculous. At best, it was just doing that awkward bad Japanese standup routine where someone makes a nonsensical non sequitur. At least, when they even remembered to do that. The whole assembly line thing in the middle took forever and had even less of a punchline at the end than One Punch Man's segments.
Like many a Japanese 'comedy' recently, this one failed to elicit a single chuckle. Maybe it leers a little more towards the absurdist than most 20 minute shows, but that just makes it feel like a short that ended up stretched out, especially with the throwback art and animation, but it's basically just a montage of one note gags of either "SOMETHING TOTALLY RANDOM HAPPENED" or "THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I SAID WOULD HAPPEN JUST HAPPENED" with the flimsiest of connections from one to the next, so it doesn't even have the loosest of plots or characters and their interactions to fall back on.
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I think this is anime for the soulless. I kind of liked the sex joke since that actually had some punch and clashed with the entire idol purity thing but that didn’t stop them from running it into the ground either. They also could have done something with the idol’s reactions rather than just showing her being speechless. But I guess that would have required a bit more creativity than someone pointing out that something really inappropriate is being said or done.
They also had a Kaiji reference. At this point, that almost gets referenced as frequently as, say, Jojo but that has a rich pool of quotes and poses to draw from additionally to the style rather than just going ZAWA ZAWA. They did well with imitating Tinegawa’s speeches though I guess? Still hardly a step away from “It’s over 9000!!”/”Just as planned!”.