#172: Gakuen Handsome (2016)

 

Director: Toneso Kiashi

Based on a video game by Team YokkyuuFuman

Voice Cast: Natsuki Hanae as Yoshiki Maeda; Kazunori Nomiya as Renji Kagami; Ryohei Kimura as Sakuya Mitsurugi; Satomi Akesaka as Yū; Satoshi Tsuruoka as Shingo Shiga; Taiten Kusunoki as Jirō; Tetsuya Kakihara as Takuya Saotome; Yuuto Suzuki as Teruhiko Saionji

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Newspaper headline] Michupero goes mad! Popular amateur model sumo wrestles on the runway...

Gakuen Handsome, if you were to look at the screenshots, would require some explanation as you look at the bishonen ("beautiful boy") character designs and their pronounced chins, sharp enough to open envelopes with. Yes, this is a parody; originally, a BL (Boys Love) video game, first I have to explain that this is a parody of the Yaoi genre, a genre targeted to women about romances between men. The genre is different from actual storytelling about gay men for gay men, such as the bara genre. Also, Gakuen Handsome's existence can be emphasised that there is another BL game in existence called Gakuen Heaven (2002), a romance between male high school students which this is clearly taking the piss out of among others.

Micro-series, a twelve episode production here with three minutes per episode, do seem a place you can get away with some crude animation or barely move the images at all for humour. The end credits for this show, for emphasis of this, has the main cast distort their limbs like worn out rubber dolls in time to the upbeat J-pop song. One aspect of the joke here, which many including myself may not appreciate, is that this is also a parody of some of the worst qualities of the yaoi genre even in aesthetic, the character designs being terrible on purpose for a genre where the term "yaoi hands" is a meme, where aggrandized hands (or them accidentally grow enormous in the next panel) has been a common issue in the art. This particular show's trademark, referring to this, is obviously a love of glamorously over-the-top chins.

Beyond this, you can get most of the humour even without context as a surreal piece. Lead Yoshiki, who stands out because he is not even drawn with eyes, is your typical anime male protagonist starting at Baramon High School, an all-boy's school where immediately he is flirted with by his new teacher Teruhiko, which in another context would be deeply problematic, as is the principal being blunt encouraging him into romances, but here is thankfully not going to go in that direction for the humour. Instead, in mind of parodying the genre it is based on and thankfully never crossing a problematic line, here the only joke in regards to this is that even Yoshiki's own little sister, drawn better than anyone else with actual eyes too, asks him why he has not started a romance with a fellow student from the first day. Neither is the joke ever about the characters being gay, as this show, for all its silliness, is definitely earnest with all its manly crushes even if proving this involves blowing a building up on purpose to escape an idol contract.

You do not have a lot of time in this world, as is expected with many micro-series, so instead the narrative is a series of bizarre vignettes surrounding these handsome bishonen figures, clichés taken to their extreme. The buff sports player; the strict school council member; the best friend; the other new student, a gruff voiced outsider who is tough....and secretly loves cats, to the point he dies once due to the cuteness of stroking one in a cat cafe in the best episode. Even if the show is slight, only twenty four minutes long altogether, you get an eclectic cast which thankfully leads to the bizarre. You learning flying is illegal at Baramon High School's sports day, already a curious competition with abrupt boiling curry bun eating and pit holes in the race course. You learn that true fashion according to Sakuya, who gets a two part story as a result, is just a sumo loincloth in public, gaining him an immediate modelling career as a result. That if you go by interpretation, in the second best episode after Shingo's adventure to the cat cafe, all representations of yourself in art class by fellow students is accurate, even if it turns you into a squiggle or playfully includes better drawn versions of the cast. That the best way to welcome a student to the school is to dress him as a disco-ball, and hang him off the roof for his own welcoming party, after previous attempts and having random costumes laying around does not work.

Like a few of these micro-series, this will be a short review but it does say a lot that, even if a parody, it still has a lot of heart. Heart that, even involving a few buildings being blown including by accident, these are still characters who eventually bond in their own man crushes, none of the humour mean or gross or at the expense of the characters, beyond them being a bit dumb or Renji the strict school rep's ill advised (but eventually successful) attempt at a part time job at a bakery. Heart because, with each episode ending in fan art, the fan base of the show was really in love with the franchise, to the point they even helped crowd fund to get the series for Team YokkyuuFuman, the original game creators, with stretch goals to increase the scope of the anime's release¹. It is a reoccurring trend to micro-series when they work, that even due to their length, they are so distinct and charming they all have personalities, more so as you learn in this case that they gained a fan base like this willing to help the show even exist.

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1) As referred to HERE.