Konnichiwa! Maid-chan desu!
What happens when you put a girl that hates games, a “foreigner” that cannot speak English, and a rich, intelligent, but believes-everything girl in one club?
Asobi Asobase!
The anime is based on a manga by Suzukawa Rin. It has an unusual drawing style, but Maid-chan thinks it works perfectly with the strange characters and events.
One of the three girls in the club is Nomura Kasumi. She hates games because when Kasumi was small, her big sister would tease her using games. The only thing she really wants is to be left alone, for example to be able to write BL. Ecchi!
Too bad for Kasumi that realty does not conform to her wishes. This is mostly thanks to Honda Hanako.
Hanako is the child of a rich family, they even have a butler. (Maid-chan strongly suggest you never, ever, hire this one!)
Hanako is hard working, intelligent, and a girl who aims at the top in her class, but at the same time she has no problem believing the strangest things (Maid-chan blames her butler). Always on the search for new games it is mostly Hanako that drags the other two girls into the abyss of the game hell.
Hell is other people, or so the saying goes, Maid-chan has been told. For Olivia it’s those other people who ask her for help in English.
Because, while Olivia came into the class pretending to have just arrived from overseas with a broad accent, she has actually never left Japan and is even worse in English than Kasumi! To keep the facade, Olivia has to go through some pains. Even her try to “accidentally” reveal the truth backfires.
Isn’t that stupid? Maid-chan never understands why people give to much on what other people think about you.
Speaking of other people… what do you think about this girl?
Oka is, even the most stupid of you humans may have guessed, the leader of the school’s occult club. She is one of those characters that come to the “pastime club” from time to time to play, make fun of or annihilate the club.
During their days, the three club member test different games, with mostly bad results. But they even get an advisor teacher, a lonely woman called Higuchi Chisato.
Maid-chan thinks women like Chisato may be the reason for some very bad (and sometimes illegal) comments. But there are people giving reasons to even worse comments, and one of those is Olivia’s brother.
Maid-chan will save you from having to see him, but the other members of the pastime club have doubt that he is really Olivia’s brother, for obvious optical reasons. Not to mention his character…
Conclusion
Asobi Asobase is not your usual comedy or slice-of-life anime. In the whole cast there is probably not a single person Maid-chan would describe as “normal”. And what happens is also not the usual school stuff, some it is even a bit disturbing.
The anime works a lot with extremely expressive faces and humor that often isn’t your run of the mill slapstick.
The same goes for the graphics that have a rough shine on them that goes well with the general feeling of the work.
You might not get many LOL moments with Asobi Asobase, but Maid-chan is sure you will be fascinated by the pastime club and it’s members. You might need a tiny bit of masochism from time to time to enjoy all scenes though, to endure the embarrassment.
All in all, Asobi Asobase get’s 8/10 on the totally objective Maid-chan scale.
See you next time!
