As my anime buddy was telling me last Sunday, this season especially seems to be chock-filled with some crazy comedy. Of the ones whose themes I've covered on the blog, there are "Back Street Girls" and "Grand Blue" with their catchy tunes. Then, I discovered this one that my friend has not shown to me at his place; I only found out through YouTube. But before I introduce this one, let me preface it by saying that over the years from time to time, there seems to have been this sub-genre of anime which involves high school girls getting involved in all sorts of nutty antics.
For example, there was "Love Lab"（恋愛ラボ）in 2013 centering on a group of girls who start up a club on how to handle the art of l'amour.
A bit earlier in 2011, there was "Nichijou"（日常）which kinda reached near-Kafkaesque levels of humour.
Now, in Summer 2018, I managed to come across "Asobi Asobase"（あそびあそばせ...Let Fun Have Fun）, a title that has popped up frequently on YouTube over the past several weeks. I finally gave in to my curiosity and took a gander at a few of the videos. Frankly, I had to wipe up the saliva spray off the screen since I was laughing out loud at some of the insanity. As I said in the article for the "Love Lab" ending theme, my anime buddy seems to enjoy comedy but only to a certain level; if it gets too crazy, he loses interest. The fact that I have openly threatened to dislodge several internal organs on watching scenes from "Asobi Asobase" probably means that he will never show this. His loss.
"Asobi Asobase" seems to have elements from both "Nichijou" and "Love Lab" with some fortified anarchy to boot. I did end up getting up a copy of "Love Lab" through Amazon last year, so I wouldn't mind getting "Asobi Asobase" as well in the next several months.
To be honest, I'm glad that I immediately stumbled onto the scenes rather than the opening credits since the latter has cleverly cloaked the show as a super-cute slice-of-life anime based on friendship and learning about life. The three main seiyuu playing the Japanese equivalent of The Three Stooges, Hina Kino（木野日菜）, Rika Nagae（長江里加）and Konomi Kohara（小原好美）sing the sugary-sweet opening theme "Three Piece". As one commenter pointed out, this could be one of the most misleading opening credits sequences in anime history.
Rei Tanaka（タナカ零）was responsible for words and music for "Three Piece". Man, listening to the full version makes things even catchier and calming for me. It's almost like an opening theme with trap ambitions. Yes, let's relax for 30 minutes of meaningful conversations and splendid scenery, and enj...WHAT THE HELL?!
Of course, by the time viewers reached the end of Episode 1, the joke was out so the ending credits no longer had to put up pretenses. Instead, everything ends with the same seiyuu headbanging to some death metal and some cool graphics. "Inkya Impulse" is the title with Genki Mizuno（ミズノゲンキ）and Shuhei Mutsuki（睦月周平）behind its spawning. Ikepy & KSKN also feature in the song as well although I have no idea who they are.
I will finish off with the very first scene that I saw that had me tearing up in laughter as much as Olivia did in disgust...for far worse reasons. All I can say is that all three seiyuu must need those throat lozenges regularly considering all the screaming that they have to do from episode to episode.
P.S. Konomi Kohara who plays the relatively least crazy Kazumi is a seiyuu that I remember from last year going into this year as she portrayed the adorable Kukuri in the updated version of "Mahoujin Guru Guru"（魔法陣グルグル...Magical Circle Guru Guru）.
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