Aiura

Plot: 

Insights into the (actually funny) antics of three high school girls who seem to be completely clueless with life but sincere and in for having fun.  Each episode is 3-minutes long and has a series of gags with an overall lose progression of time tying the series together over 12 episodes.

Studio:

It’s a 3-minute episode series, does this really matter?

Ahem…

I mean…

Director:

The director is relatively new to directing… not to anime but to directing.  His latest directorial credits include directing the episodes 9-10 arc of Aoi Bungaku and the director of the recent Nerewareta Gakuen movie.  This seems to be his first comedy, and three-minute episode formula.

Studio:

Liden Films

Source:

The anime is based off a manga that started in 2011 and is still ongoing.  It currently has four volumes out.  The manga is a yonkoma manga, meaning comic-strip four panel manga that plays up the gag formula.

Review:

Crabs!  I mean…  Yeah this anime has a thing for crabs right from the beginning though I don’t really understand why.  And beginning, I mean, the opening.

This anime is enjoyable and funny though it doesn’t offer much by it’s nature.  The best praise I can give it right off the bat is it made me laugh, and consistently did so up through about halfway through the series.  Despite being about younger looking High School girls there was only one notable lolicon moment – involving the rain… and a later shot of swimsuits – and while I suppose they are “legal” at this age they still of course look about 12 so you know that they’re doing.

Around halfway through the series the anime changes and actually begins to follow some loose time-based plot.  Which makes sense because it is difficult to string anything else together when you’re dealing with such short chunks of time, but it’s a little sad because it feels like it gets away from what I came here for and what initially kept me coming back – the actual funny moments.

The anime begins to ween off over time and loses the charm it started with.  But, unlike a lot of other 3-minute shows it did leave me feeling somewhat fulfilled as it actually delivered on the promise of high-school girl comedy.

It’s not bad but if you were to spend even just 30 minutes on anime – an approximation of time it’d take to get through this – there are much better OVA’s to spend it on.  But this is cute, and sweet, so if you’re trying to be an officiant on 3-minute anime then it’s not something you’ll likely resent watching.

At the end of the day I can’t give it a better score than Yama no Susume which is very different but I consider it to be just as good in different ways.

[starrater]