Best Student Council Volume 1: A New Home
Hawkeye
At Miyagami Private Academy, there is a group of students who wield even more power then the teachers. They are called the Maximum Authority-wielding Best Student Council, or the Best Student Council for short. They run and operate the school, their word is law and every girl wants to be one of them.
Rino is a young girl who, with the help of her mysterious pen pal, has just transferred to Miyagami Private Academy. She has a puppet called Puuchan with her, who she acknowledges and talks to like he was a real person. After her arrangements for an apartment fall through due to a recent string of arson attacks, she decides to try and join the Best Student Council, who get board, meals and schooling for free. Through dumb luck and a little bit of talent, she joins the team. But being part of the Best Student Council isn’t easy, and Rino finds her self battling arsonists, doing school detective work, fending off jealous students, judging a curry contest, and more. One thing’s for sure, she’ll never be bored.
There’s a big trend lately of making comical fairly pointless series, and Best Student Council certainly falls into that category. It’s meant to be funny, sweet, and make the viewer feel like a 13 year old girl inside, and too bad if you’re not a 13 year old girl. It’s a lot like the anime Azumanga Daioh, in that it centralizes around mostly girl characters and has no larger plot. Some back stories do tie in throughout the first disc, but each episode could easily stand alone.
The animation was smooth and crisp, with that over the top flair during the comedic scenes. However, during the action scenes, they did cheap out, doing stiff movements of background elements instead of drawing out the animation. I liked the character designs because they felt original. I didn’t feel like I had seen or met these characters before.
The music was fitting but it often enhanced that feeling you were watching some little kid anime by being overly cutesy or sweet. The voice acting was also decent, though not the best I’ve heard. Some of the character’s voices were too stereotypical and over-acted. I don’t really like being able to tell absolutely everything about a character with just their voice, I like the voice acting to give the characters depth.
The extras aren’t spectacular, just opening and closing animation as well as a character gallery. However, the 1st disc did come with a sheet of stickers featuring Pucchan. I happen to love stickers, so I was delighted, even if they were of a demented little puppet.
Overall, it was fun to watch, though coma-inducing. Trying to do the whole disc at once had my brain leaking out of my ears and onto the floor. I would have really liked to see some larger plot. This is the first disc, a sort of introduction to things, so it is possible the character will grow and change over time and possibly work towards some goal. But I have a feeling it’s like the rest of its kind and exists to just be silly, rather then tell a story. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you’ll enjoy it.
Entertainment: 7
Fluff is fluff, each episode had mini plots, but I want a larger one.
Technical: 6
Hooray for stickers!
Overall: 7
DVD Features: Episodes 1-4
DVD Extras: Clean Open and Closing Animation, Character Art Gallery
