Zashiki Warashi no Tatami-chan (Episodes 1-6)

in #anime4 years ago

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When I realized there was another anime out with three-minute episodes I figured I'd get a quick review in since I could watch the entire thing in the span of under two episodes of another anime. That said, I did not finish this show because I have my six-episode rule that says if the show gives me no compelling reason to watch an anime after six episodes I'll drop it and write my review (However even if I hate it, if it does something that implies it might be worth watching further I'll keep watching), and I don't care if it was only going to be another eighteen minutes to finish all the episodes because this is an infuriatingly bad comedy.

A house spirit moves to Tokyo from the country and has a hard time adjusting. This is the only real premise and each episode is basically a three-minute joke. The jokes include 'Old lady hits on a young man with no real payoff, Karaoke workers annoy a patron for singing alone with no actual payoff, and my personal favorite, the guy is bad at telling a story in an uninteresting way.

On one hand, I think some of these jokes are supposed to poke at aspects of Japanese culture as a sort of observational comedy, making it a bit difficult to judge in that regard. On the other hand, something like the bad storyteller is a universal concept and was done in a very similar way by an American comedian George Carlin. The premise of the joke is largely the same, but the difference is Carlin had an actual punchline to the whole bit and it didn't just kind of end. (Seriously, the joke in this show even uses the constantly changing time frame the story allegedly happened in, and irrelevant non-sequesters).

Unless you are really into Japanese Culture and get a lot of what this show brings up there is going to be nothing here for you, and honestly even if you do get all of the references the jokes just aren't very good. It doesn't matter that the animation is really low quality, clearly, the show doesn't need a big budget, it matters entirely on if the jokes work or not. And for me, it failed horribly.