Title: Daily Lives of High School Boys
Alternate Title: Danshi Kōkōsei no Nichijō | 男子高校生の日常
Encompasses: Complete Series
Published by: Nippon Ichi Software America (North America), Hanabee Entertainment (Australia)
Based on: Manga series by Yasunobu Yamauchi
Genre: Slice of Life, Comedy
Audio: Japanese Dub
Subtitles: English
Special Thanks: NIS America for providing me with a copy of this release to review!
Join Tadakuni, Hidenori and Yoshitake as they undergo the trials and tribulations of life in high school! Each episode presents the boys and their classmates in unique situations that you may or may not have faced in high school yourself! You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! (But hopefully laugh more.) You’ll be astounded by the zany antics of the Sanada High School community!
As comedy tends to be subjective rather than one size fits all, it is hard to tell what your opinion of the show will be like when you finally get around to watching Daily Lives of High School Boys. That being said, I can only review what I thought about the show and personally I enjoyed it. As with other manga to anime adaptations such as Azumanga Daioh, the series retains its 4koma roots by having each episode split up into smaller bite-sized mini-episodes that are focused on one particular event without lingering for too long. Its quick nature and other little gimmicks worked for what they were trying to pull off.
Despite not having high initial expectations, every one of the episodes managed to earn a few chuckles and/or laughs from me – not only via comical dialogue but also the writers use of tropes, fourth wall breaking and the occasional visual references. As with most comedy series the skits ended up being hit or miss, but especially for a title that hasn’t dubbed into English or localized to make better sense to the western market, I was happy with the number of “hits” presented. I can say that for myself, it was a thoroughly enjoyable series to watch.
The concept behind Daily Lives of High School Boys is in stark contrast to what one would expect to see in a school slice-of-life series. While usually you see either a prominently female dominated character cast or otherwise a balance between genders, this series features a heavily male dominated cast. Because of this, even some of the usual jokes such as underwear theft can be viewed in a different light. It is erratic, it occasionally transcends the bounds of reality and it usually hit the right notes in doing so.
But in the end, Daily Lives of High School Boys follows three male high school students – Tadakuni, Hidenori and Yoshitake whom each have vivid imaginations and distinct personalities, their equally quirky male classmates and occasionally their female acquaintances and relatives as they live through their high school years. While initially set to have average lives and take part in standard school events / festivities, their lives and the people they meet are far from average.. unless I just had a very bland life as a high school boy.
There are a few other little recurring inside jokes and a whole other after-credits segment by the title “High School Girls are Funky” that appear throughout the series that will let you find out and potentially enjoy. While not all segments worked with me, evidently my personality and preferences were pretty well covered by the writers target audience and quite possibly yours won’t be.
In terms of actual plot, there is no overarching storyline asides from “High school boys making their way through school“. So if you don’t enjoy the comedy… there isn’t too much that will appeal to you in Daily Lives of High School Boys.
Daily Lives of High School Boys has the animation backing of the studio Sunrise (Tiger & Bunny etc.), which only a couple of weeks ago had North American anime publishers diving at their older releases left, right and center. Overall the design quality was average and while simple in some areas such as backdrops and animation, managed to pull off some interesting character designs. The animators attempted to make use of several visual quirks throughout the episodes – one of the most noticeable being the attention to detail put on characters teeth in certain scenes.
Visual quality on the other hand were adequate and did the job well – with the blu-ray format bringing out sharper and clearer looking visuals than the DVD release in other regions. In a move that is becoming more prominent with NIS America anime releases, their release is blu-ray exclusive and isn’t always as import friendly as the DVD format.
Daily Lives of High School Boys makes use of a single primary opening theme by the name Shiny Tale performed by Japanese rock group Mix Speaker’s. It was an enjoyable song that went well with the genre of the series and came with solid animation to back it up. The ending sequence on the other hand featured the song Ohisama by Amesaki Annainin and was something very distinct from most ending scenes I have watched in the past. Not a huge fan of the theme but certainly left an impression.
Produced by Audio Highs, the musical backing was also quite enjoyable to listen to. A number of tracks and genres were used over the course of the series, occasionally being brought into the scene to improve the comical and spontaneous nature of the unfolding event.
As with every anime published in North America by Nippon Ichi Software America in the past, this release exclusively contains a Japanese dub. While personal preferences will dictate if this is good or bad news, I wouldn’t have minded an English dub to see how NIS America handle dubbing a comedy anime given their past experience with video games. However the Japanese dub was of a good standard with most of the voice cast suiting their roles and the comedy attached to them very well.
As with all other anime releases from the team at Nippon Ichi Software America, before hitting the shelves as a standard edition it is first released as a pricier Premium Edition. As usual the Premium Edition comes with a nice hardcover artbox and a hardcover artbook containing information on the characters and episodes as well as some additional artwork. As they did with anohana and Umineko their artbook has been themed as a “Daily Guide for High School Life”, with each episode being split into “Guidelines” and each scene having some sort of “meaningful” message on how to get through every day high school life.
In addition to the set of physical goodies, this collection of Daily Lives of High School Boys comes with clean opening and ending sequences, Japanese commercials a “Bonus Scenes” OVA episode and trailers. This makes quite a nice compilation of goodies overall.
But in the end, comedies are almost always subjective and what someone else finds funny may not be your cup of tea. But with Daily Lives of High School Boys boasting a sizable cast of eccentric characters, a resolve to stick with the “high school boys” theme through a number of cliche and not so cliche school life events and not going too overboard with trying to be spontaneous or funny… it worked out much better than I was expecting for my tastes.
cool