This is the cute side of sadomasochism.
Three girls spend their first days of high school doing everyday things then dropping in on a club with zero members to look things up on the internet in the first episode of Yuyushiki. This trio, Yui, Yuzu and Yukari spend their time messing around with each other in a friendly, if sometimes borderline erotic, way. In their first few days in high school they spend most of it wandering around before they come across a poster asking for members to join the Data Processing Club, which has 0 members. They later end up in that club room at the invitation of a teacher, and spend an afternoon looking things up online and making jokes about them before heading home for the day.
This is a classic healing-type anime in the sense of story. It’s a full-length episode made up of stories that come from 4-koma. The only plot element you can really expect out of this series is time passing. So what you are left with in judging a series like this is the main cast and since this is a comedy, the quality of the jokes. Are these girls any more than eye candy? Are they likable individually and as a group? Do they all seem to have good chemistry with one another?
From the first episode, it felt like it was a bit of a mixed bag. The orchestrated joke elements weren’t really working for me. As a result, the first 15 or so minutes firmly put this show in the dropped category. Then, when they actually got into the club room and started just talking and looking stuff up online it completely changed my opinion.
It was almost as though something changed in the direction of the show. The first 2/3rds felt like an uninspired direct adaptation of some early chapters of the manga. The final third felt completely freed from that constraint. Dialogue felt pretty natural and it was like I was watching a group of friends interact with each other like real people and not like they were scripted into doing so. I have no idea if that was the case in how this episode was produced, but it felt like two completely different shows with the same characters. So basically, more of the characters acting freely and less of the scripted jokes.
Finally, about the production values for this show. They honestly aren’t very high, nor should anyone ever expect high production from a healing-type series set in a high school. It’s not like they are doing Neo-Venezia or Earth on the decline. It’s just passable and I’m more than willing to live with that.
Reasons to Continue Watching: High school girls having fun and natural dialogue between characters
Reasons to Drop: There’s a perverted edge to parts of this show and the jokes can be awful
My Verdict: There was enough in this episode to warrant watching a second episode. This does have potential to fall on its face more than I’d like though.
