Asobi Asobase (original) (raw)

Asobi Asobase is known for one of the best and craziest batshit nonsensical comedies you're going to find in the otaku industry. The art contributes greatly to give you at first the feeling this is just another school manga, but oh, boy, this is one of the many ways it's going to troll you. In fact, as probably the series which made me laugh the most in my life, I regret all its qualities really end right there.

The author maintains a great pace up until the first 100 chapters or so, but then she starts adding some new characters who don't even add anything to... the plot, are funny or developed afterwards. The comedy starts to suffer from ever more exaggerated tones and the story ends quite abruptly. Everything turns out therefore to be forgettable and like a waste of time.

As for the side plots (even a comedy must have one), one of the idyosyncratic paths this manga chose was for example trying to match one of the cast's members with a (transgender) woman. Well, the issue here is that it has no synergy with the flow or the mood of this series (like many of the sub-stories), and to make things worse, the "character arc" is, like I suggested, never concluded.

In short, it was all laughs, but no substance. Things got, as expected, eventually obnoxious and unsustainable. The author failed at the basics and gave all too much focus to the sidelines. The entire building finally fell apart and we were left with the feeling that maybe it wasn't so funny after all.

Verdict: 3/10