Study -- Seishun Zeminaru/Never Give It Up!!（セイシュンゼミナール）

Happy Monday! My anime buddy came back last week after nearly a month in East Asia so we've had to play quite a bit of catch-up when it has come to this season's batch of anime. A number of these are fairly short in duration and a couple of them (one being the sequel to "One Punch Man") haven't been quite up to snuff so we've left them alone for now and there's a possibility that my friend may even jettison them from the lineup.

One that is encapsulated within the regular 30-minute format is "Boku-tachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai"（ぼくたちは勉強ができない）which has the English title of "We Never Learn" and the Japanese abbreviation of "Bokuben"（ぼく勉）. I've made the observation that this is a harem show of sorts and a slice-of-life high school comedy surrounding a tutor, Nariyuki Yuiga（唯我 成幸）, who has to help out three students: the ojosan-like Fumino Furuhashi（古橋文乃）who's a literature expert but can't do math to save her life, the stoic and logical Rizu Ogata（緒方理珠）who is a math whiz but has difficulty grasping literature, and supremely ebullient Uruka Takemoto（武元うるか）with a natural athleticism but is at a loss when it comes to academics. The site TV Tropes got it spot on when they compared the three to Kirk, Spock and McCoy respectively.

The lessons are the secondary point, though, as the show gradually displays a comedy of errors and misunderstandings when Fumino, Rizu and Uruka begin to show slightly more than platonic feelings for their tutor...and they are not the only ones.

The opening credits for "Boku-tachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai" are adorned by Study's rendition of "Seishun Zeminaru" (Salad Day Seminar), and Study just happens to consist of the three seiyuu behind Furuhashi, Ogata and Takemoto, Haruka Shiraishi（白石晴香）, Miyu Tomita（富田美憂）and Sayumi Suzushiro（鈴代紗弓）respectively. Tomita is already gaining a fair number of songs on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", and as a seiyuu, she's becoming quite recognizable to me due to her calm and button-down roles for the most part. "Seishun Zeminaru" isn't all that different from the usual super-genki anime opening tune but considering a fairly busy week last week with the accompanying stress, I was quite welcoming in hearing this one again after almost a month. Saori Kodama（こだまさおり）and Takahiro Yamada（山田高弘）took care of words and music.

I have been able to find a full version of the ending theme. Once again the Study trio are back to perform "Never Give It Up!!" which has a mild synthpop feeling created by songwriters Mami Kawada（川田まみ）and Maiko Iuchi（井内舞子）. I actually like "Never Give It Up!!" slightly more because of that intro by Study and the credits themselves at the beginning which seem to have the rapidly singing mouths on the blackboard representing the three main characters themselves. I think the moe factor has been raised a bit more here.

At this point, I think viewers have already come up with their choices about who Taiga should ultimately be paired with, but most likely by the end of this show, he'll end up remaining friends with the three. However, in the interests of not straddling the fence, I wouldn't mind if the lad gladly accepted the affections of his junior high school buddy, Uruka. For one thing, she has that Lucille Ball appeal with me.