Seitokai Yakuindomo

Title:Seitokai Yakuindomo
Student Council Staff Members (literal translation)
生徒会役員共
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , , , , , ,
Notables:
Takatoshi is a new student in a recently gender-integrated high school, and is asked to join the student council as the vice president. Thus begins his days as the only normal boy among 3 female student council officers (dark-haired popular president and model student Shino Amakusa, red haired nice but simple-minded rich girl Aria Shichijō, blonde loli genius Suzu Hagimura) whose every sentence appears to end up in a reference to (warning: not safe for children) condoms, their period, pubic hair, masturbation, bondage, or sex in general (with most every sentence containing some "bleeps" for the many bawdy terms). What's a reputable, modest and shy male member of the student council to do in this situation?
Covering volumes 1+2 of Ujiie Tozen's Seitokai Yakuindomo slice-of-life comedy manga with 5+ volumes so far.

[TV series, 2010, 13 episodes, 23 min; see also the OVA sequel: Seitokai Yakuindomo: Kaette Kita Seitokai Yakuindomo and Seitokai Yakuindomo*].

1:15min TV Opening - YouTube Video
1:30min TV Ending - YouTube Video
"生徒会" ("seitokai") = "student council"; "役員" ("yakuin") = "official, executive, staff"; "共" ("domo") is a plural indicator.
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch 7 8 7 8 4 5 Devil Doll [series:2352#752]
[Score: 65% = "Watch". Gender-reversed scenario of: Green Green]

Watching out of sheer curiosity. A reversed Green Green scenario perhaps, with girls thinking in B Gata H Kei categories?

Not really. These girls are talking in an extremely lewd way but they're not acting accordingly (with the exception of their teacher), making them appear inconsistent. Some scenes are in fact quite vulgar (such as the suggestion box) but with these girls being "all talk" so far, this is by no means as repellent as KissXSis (TV) because I never get the feeling they really mean it; they're just blabbering ecchi stuff all the time but are "mostly harmless" otherwise. Still, the majority of dialogs is just to end up in some lewd comment by one of the girls coming out of nowhere, and Takatoshi facepalming every time, being almost the only character with seemly behavior amongst the leads (together with the violent genius loli). With time, Takatoshi gets dazed by the permanent vulgarity and stops talking back, much like the audience will get used to these girls' language and stop expecting any decent behavior by them (the funniest scene for me was when Takatoshi and Suzu were alone in the clubroom and notice how no one is making lewd remarks since Shino and Aria went on a school trip).
With all that vulgarity being the core of the show, there's little room left for anything else such as story or character development; apparently the target group considers girls using such obscene language funny enough to not ask for anything else. Actually, the "funny" elements aren't how lewd these girls can get but their abstruse mental leaps, forcing each and every conversation into an obscene direction. Which makes this show a failure for me, except for the occasional scenes where Shino and Suzu begin to sense how important Takatoshi's influence on the student council has become, and two girls finally even begin to have feelings for Takatoshi (whereas Aria, the naive oppai princess, remains a dead loss throughout the series).

Amongst the technical attributes I like the SD faces least and the peppy ED song best (plus Mutsumi's seiyuu), but neither visuals nor audio are of outstanding quality.
It's most helpful that there's not a single character that I'd actually hate: The three female council members sure are stereotypical (think Toradora!'s Sumire, Ami and Taiga in perverted variants) but likable (resulting in an average rating for Characters which they might not deserve from a more objective point of view); even Hata (the school's newspaper club president, always looking for "Kodak moments" and then selling the ecchi photographs to other students) is funny in her own way. This was the main reason for me to not abort this show early on.
The content is very episodic; some scenes are only a few seconds long, only to jump to something completely unrelated immediately afterwards. The biggest deficits of this anime (aside of the permanent lewdness, unless this were the reason one is interested in this show in the first place) are the almost nonexistent story, the characters hardly developing during episodes 2-10, and Mutsumi (the shy cute Judo club president) getting not enough airtime. So in the end for me this series is inferior to most generic school comedies (such as K-ON!): Even a slice-of-life show has way more story than this anime.
A core issue of SYD is that many scenes are based on suggestive puns in high-speed dialog scenes. The subtitles do convey the jokes but often they're a lot to read, so the subtitled version can't possibly have the same impact as the original would have to native speakers. I can imagine this show to work better in dubbed mode; then again many of these jokes aren't translatable that easily.
  • Episode 01: (-) A New Member. Random sexual jokes, very low on content.
  • Episode 02: (0) Sports Festival Preparations. Much better IMHO. The committee members have accepted each other for what they are (with growing mutual respect), forming a team that works together efficiently with everyone contributing their particular strength. And Takatoshi's "first lewd statement" was funny.
  • Episode 03: (0) Graduation Trip. Hagimura and Takatoshi were more interesting than the princess and the fantasizing president. The last few seconds were a big disappointment.
  • Episode 04: (0) Birthday Party. The H stuff gets even more explicit and the 4-koma nature of the scenes even more dominant; at the same time character chemistry is improving, thus it's still fun to watch this show.
  • Episode 05: (-) Pool Opening. Somehow less funny than previous episodes, and with even Takatoshi's seemingly innocent imouto being a bit too "considerate", more vulgar as well.
  • Episode 06: (-) Ghost Story. Slightly less vulgar this time (or am I just benumbed from this stuff already?) but not that funny either. Mutsumi offers a small chance of something even remotely similar to romance... we'll see where this will go.
  • Episode 07: (0) Beach Episode. I'm already thankful for every bit of coherent story. Up to this point, the first manga volume's content has been covered by the anime, i. e. the essence of about 150 pages of 4-koma made it into 150 minutes of anime material.
  • Episode 08: (0) Judo Match. Introducing a new girl, the morals counselor. The match was nice as well, and so was Takatoshi receiving a praise for the first time; this was one of the better episodes.
  • Episode 09: (0+) Sports Festival. The best episode so far, with both the SYD newspaper and the sports festival part being entertaining and even two hints of blossoming romance being shown. Without all the lewdness this could be a nice little comedy by now.
  • Episode 10: (-) Cultural Festival. Less consistent story this time, and then the one scene I was looking forward to wasn't even shown, at the very end of the episode. And no, I don't really like that maid with the fetish of sniffing her ojou-sama's used underwear.
  • Episode 11: (0) Christmas. Shino is cute when she's blushing; 90 seconds of fun for me, which is more than most episodes up to this point gave me.
  • Episode 12: (0+) Entrance Exam. Shino's Valentine chocolate, Kotomi cramming for the test and Suzu being a fine teacher made this a nice episode; that's how little I'm asking from this show...
  • Episode 13: (+) Final Episode. Hey, they can make non-sexual jokes as well, and they're even funny! This episode felt like a real anime, unlike these twelve 4-koma collections with moving images before.
My favorite quotation: "Don't keep breaking the 4th Wall like that!"

It's over... and somehow SYM managed to get a higher score than Kanokon.

Last updated Tuesday, August 09 2011. Created Wednesday, August 03 2011.
Unevaluated 21 [series:2352#3223]
(Five episodes watched)

Hit-and-miss comedy. It's pretty vulgar but it doesn't bother me. I have to say that some of the running gags annoy me, though. For instance, showing the arrow pointing to Suzu several times per episode is getting pretty old.

I think when this show attempts to show a plot it gets duller. I found episodes 1, 4, and 5 funnier than 2 and 3, which had some storyline (Shino and Aria going on a trip). Perhaps it's better when it's just random sex jokes. I'll keep watching for now.

Last updated Tuesday, August 03 2010. Created Tuesday, August 03 2010.
Watch Stretch [series:2352#628]
{Watch+ or Rent-)

(All episodes watched):

My first impression, as I briefly scanned my download of episode one, was that this looked like a fun show with lots of visual comedy and ought to be a favorite of mine this summer. The jokes seemed fresh and genuinely funny, at least some of the time. It kind of feels like this is based on a four-frame newspaper comic, as there are lots of quick gags but I detect little or no sign of a longterm plot. The principal characters didn't seem to have much personality, or, in the case of the three girls I couldn't find much reason to like them. At first, I liked the risque jokes instead of the usual fanservice, but they got out of hand and I squirmed as the show became vulgar; very vulgar, with references to things like 'An*l M*sturbation'. Ugh; maybe once or twice would be OK, but not like this. It just struck me as more disgusting than amusing. I'm not so sure that Seitokai Yakuindomo is the sort of show I want to watch anymore.

...turns out it is. The vulgarity is scaled down in succeeding episodes, the characters become likeable, and in general the show is fun. Whereas Seitokai no Ichizon features a weird guy surrounded by more-or-less normal girls, this one goes the other way round, namely a normal guy surrounded by weird girls. One thing both have in common: a pseudo-loli girl, one who looks like a child but is in fact the same age as the rest. I find myself looking forward to new episodes of 'Seitoyak'.

Whereas most shows have visual fanservice, with boobs and butts all over, this one has a sort of lingual fanservice, with characters making lewd comments like "Go swallow your boyfriend's meat stick!". Some are funny while others are just gross; it kind of reminds me of High School Girls. This show must run very late at night. Anyway, I ended up enjoying it, and wouldn't have minded if it had been a two-season show. Only time will tell if it is worthy of a second viewing.


Last updated Thursday, December 29 2011. Created Tuesday, July 06 2010.
Unevaluated Jan-Chan [series:2352#967]
The original manga story included a lot of 4-panel (or short visual or verbal) gags, and the anime series reflects this.

It comes across like a series of short one-liner gags, puns, stunts and pranks - all strung together in a 24minute episode.

The three girls of the student body council are absolute perverts of misunderstanding, while Takatoshi is the straight guy and butt of most of their humor.

But somehow most of the jokes are sexually oriented and very simple minded.
  • (boy) I played soccer in middle school.
  • (girl 1) It sounds like you really liked to play with your balls.
  • (girl 2) Boys are like that.
Sorry, this series doesn't seem to appeal to my sense of humor, so I will probably be dropping this one.

Last updated Sunday, July 11 2010. Created Monday, July 05 2010.

Other Sites
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Official Website (Japanese) http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/seitokai/

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