Ultra Super Anime Time Block is an interesting timeslot broadcast by TokyoMX for the last few seasons. Basically, rather than a normal 24-minute-long anime series, it’s a collection of three completely unrelated shorts, each 8-minute-long. I’m all for this kind of thing, as there’s room for shows that can’t sustain a whole 24-minute episode, without falling into the other extreme of 2/3-minute episodes that end up being rather unsatisfying (but are very common because that’s easy to fit somewhere into the schedule). Of course, that depends on the actual shows proposed being any good. So how’s this season’s selection ?
Please Tell Me! Galko-chan adapts a gag web-manga where the gimmick is that the narrator goes out of her way to ask (rather crude) questions to the cast. The joke is that while main character Galko looks the part of the classic truant “gal” girl, she’s actually mostly normal and there are mundane explanations for her gal-like outbursts. Oh, and everyone has puns for their names. (Otako is the otaku-like girl, and so on.) As a whole, it’s mildly funny, if a bit overreliant on gross hygiene gags. There are worse ways to spend 8 minutes.
Sculpture Boys (Sekkou Boys) is an original concept about a bunch of male idols… Well, the first episode is mostly focused on their new manager, just fresh out of art college. With not much artistic talent, and completely burned out of painting sculpture after sculpture after sculpture, she moved on to a field where she would only deal with actual people. Or so she thinks, as her new charges are… a quatuor of classical busts. Talking (and presumably singing) busts. (After all, as the agency’s president says, there’s no danger of them sleeping around, so that’s one less headache to deal with compared to “normal” idols.)
The premise is patently absurd, but the show manage to sell it by ignoring the actual title characters for most of the episode, and instead building to the manager’s inevitable freakout. Even if you’re aware of what the series is about beforehand, the joke is so well-paced that it still works. I’m not sure there’s 12 (even short) episodes of material here, but I’m willing to give it a try.
Tabi Machi Late Show is about professional cooking or something ? It’s deathly dull and barely animated at all. The only good news is that it’s only 4 episodes, so its slot will be taken over by something different in February (a new iteration of the Kono Danshi franchise) and March (a remake/extension of Makoto Shinkai’s 1999 short She & Her Cat, of all things ?).
