Yamada’s First Time (B Gata H Kei) – Review

Yamada’s First Time introduces itself boldly, a series about a High School Girl whose lifelong ambition is to have sex with 100 guys. Before you get too excited or walk away from this series disapprovingly, the series has a relatively low male cast number therefore her goals do not eventuate in this release. Instead the show is a unique romantic comedy focusing on Yamada who despite her ambitions, good looks and appeal to almost every guy in the school cannot even get the confidence to get to the proper base with Guy #1. Thats right, instead of sex you will be enjoying 12 episodes filled with (sometimes over-the-top) sex humour, awkward moments and numerous attempts to avoid using proper anatomical terms.

Yamada has picked out her first target for her mission – her classmate Kosuda who is for the purposes of this series a drab run-of-the-mill guy who like her is also a virgin and one who she believes will be easy to captivate and get into bed with. Unfortunately for both of them, Yamada didn’t really plan ahead for anything other then finding a guy, so throughout this series we watch as scheme after scheme of hers is foiled by her own imcompetence and relationship milestones are met more through accidents then success… blooming into what may very well be something Yamada fears…. AN ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP! The series doesn’t work because the cliche gender roles of similar series have been reversed, instead it works because both of them are as indecisive and incompetent as each other, providing many comedic opportunities through this and their different personalities – with Yamada wanting and demanding more while Kosuda has no idea how to react to her (and avoiding his own building desires).

The series makes use of other secondary characters to contrast the “Awkward couple” to others, including Yamada’s best friend Takeshita who is often at the receiving end of her questions and leads to sarcastic and equally comical responses despite being the “support”, Miyano: a childhood friend of Kosuda who holds the shy / quiet stereotype and harbors a crush for him, alongside several other more minor characters, each of who have their own quirks and moments of humor. Another gimmick used by the show are characters known as “Eros Deities”, for which Yamada’s regularly acts as narrator and will occasionally speak to Yamada egging her own to make a move on Kosuda. Kosuda’s on the other hand is used in lieu of his penis. Even in scenes where there isn’t much comedy to be had, these deities were creatively used to add some sarcastic remark or means of turning the mood around.

When I began watching the show I literally thought it would be more about Yamada meeting several different guys on an episodic basis (Similar to The World God Only Knows without the whole memory erasure thing) so I can’t say I had high expectations to begin with. While sex humour would not be to everyones taste and is at times over-the-top, I think it made good use of the concept and proved to be quite an enjoyable series overall – even if a few of the episodes could have benefited from being less generic. The series is for the most part well thought out with great localization of the original Japanese script and benefited from the short “one season” series structure where they could easily keep jokes and content fresh.

I am reviewing the Blu-ray release of the series which comes in 1080p High Definition, and in this context alone the visual quality looks impressive. The visuals however are nothing unique and given the number of well designed DVD releases recently released which have yet to see a Blu-ray release, I question if there would not have been other series to receive such treatment. The designs however are appropriate for what they intended on delivering. Character designs were well planned out with occasional clothing changes, strong use of character expression to emphasize emotion and solid character animations. Backgrounds as well were nothing to be wowed about but given the setting of this series had more than enough detail to them.

The music backing in this release does its job well however when contrasted against everything else such as visuals and storyline is lost at times and does not have as big an impact as in other anime series.  They also throw in a lyrical condom song which raised an eyebrow but was oddly laughable and well used at the same time. Both the opening theme “Oshiete A to Z” and ending theme “Hadashi no Princess” by Yukari Tamura (Japanese voice actress for Yamada) proved to be rather enjoyable songs on their own and complemented with solid animation.

Even though I find it difficult not to equate any voice acting work by Brittney Karbowski to one of her best works in my opinion as the innocent Ayu Tsukimiya in Kanon (Heavy contrast between the two roles), I believe both her as Yamada and Kosuda’s voice actor Scott Freeman did a strong performance in becoming acquainted to and matching their character roles. However easily the best voice acting was from Alexis Tipton as Yamada’s Eros Deity and Cherami Leigh as Takeshita, both of who suited their roles well. Given that some jokes would have had to be changed when localizing the script to English, I believe the English dub was well directed overall and would be my recommendation for first time listeners.

In terms of extra content, there was a small but otherwise appropriate collection of on-disc goodies including:

• Commentary for Episodes 1 and 11
• Three minutes of English dub outtakes
• Textless Opening and Closing Songs
• Trailers for the following Funimation Entertainment Series (Should be respective publishers titles in DVD release): Rosario+Vampire, Hetalia World Series, Heaven’s Lost Property, My Bride is a Mermaid, Fairy Tail, Princess Jellyfish and Birdy the Mighty: Decode.

The value you will get out of watching this series will be dependent on your personal preferences. Do you enjoy series about fanservice? Lewd Jokes? Awkward moments? This might just be the series for you and one you might not want to miss. On the other hand if you have spent the whole time reading this review cringing at the prospect of watching a series like this… you are most probably right. Personally I found it hard to get into for the first few episodes then after getting accustomed to its more mature-age and unique style of humor it actually proved to be a rather enjoyable watch. You might want to watch it alone however…..

Final Score
Storyline / Character Development: B+
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: B
Personal Preference: B
Extra Content: B
Overall Score: B