GJ-bu
GJ Club
GJ部
School clubs usually advertise their activities, but the goings-on of the GJ Club are a mystery. Kyouya "Kyoro" Shinomiya recently joined and became the sole male member of the five-person club. Besides Kyoro, there is Mao Amatsuka, the club president who has a tendency to bite Kyoro when she gets mad or bashful; Megumi Amatsuka, Mao's composed younger sister who always makes tea and desserts for the club's members; Shion Sumeragi, a demure chess prodigy; and Kirara Bernstein, a meat lover with a strong feline personality. All four girls have some form of interest in Kyoro. With the girls' idiosyncratic and cute personalities, Kyoro's time in GJ-bu will never be a dull one, for better or for worse. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Synopsis
School clubs usually advertise their activities, but the goings-on of the GJ Club are a mystery. Kyouya "Kyoro" Shinomiya recently joined and became the sole male member of the five-person club. Besides Kyoro, there is Mao Amatsuka, the club president who has a tendency to bite Kyoro when she gets mad or bashful; Megumi Amatsuka, Mao's composed younger sister who always makes tea and desserts for the club's members; Shion Sumeragi, a demure chess prodigy; and Kirara Bernstein, a meat lover with a strong feline personality. All four girls have some form of interest in Kyoro. With the girls' idiosyncratic and cute personalities, Kyoro's time in GJ-bu will never be a dull one, for better or for worse. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Characters
Main
Main
Main
Main
Main
Main
Supporting
Supporting
Supporting
Supporting
Supporting
Recommendations
Reviews(20)
Tomah
April 10, 2013
GJ-bu is part of a sub-genre of slice of life which encompasses K-On, Yuru Yuri and others. These shows spend most of their times showing characters on a club usually doing absolutely nothing, whether because they skip club activities or because the club activities have no real purpose. They are usually hard to review due to few complexity in plot and characters, but it's not like it's non-existent. GJ-bu, however, takes this to extreme measures. Now, before you argue that the quality of the story is irrelevant, consider the following. If GJ-bu wants to show cute girls (and a boy, though on the verge of beingconsidered a girl as well) doing nothing but random stuff, then first it must get the viewer to actually care about the girls, otherwise it's just irritating rather than endearing. That's what good storytelling does, by offering a bridge between the world, including its characters, and the viewer. The problem is... this show doesn't have good storytelling. While most shows at least try to construct a basic conceptual setting for the story to take place, this one decides it doesn't need to. Instead, we are thrown into the middle of an unknown place, with anonymous faces doing strange things we don't understand. Who are they? What are they trying to achieve? How do they relate with each other? There are many other questions, but these are the least you have to answer to convince the viewer that your characters are humans and not moeblobs walking around. GJ-bu's characterization is done through a few dialogues there and here and a few, very few, scenes outside the club. That's all you get. Maybe the story just wasn't well executed, but the characters could still be good, right? Indeed, conceptually it's possible to elaborate interesting characters, but fail to fulfill their potential in practice. That's not the case of GJ-bu, which defines its characters in terms of clichéd stereotypes and refuses to give them any further depth. It's not that they lack back-story or psychological investigation, they just weren't meant to have any complexity to start with. One-dimensional characters can be done well as long as they remain entertaining and/or charismatic, but to do so they must have interesting features and interactions with other characters. Characters from GJ-bu just do the same things over and over again, taking for granted the viewer's interest because of the cute and silly things going on. There's pretty much nothing fresh about the scenes, since they revolve around stereotypes doing their things. As one would expect, if the storytelling is bad and the characters are poor, the jokes aren't exactly a masterpiece of humor, specially because they rely heavily on the characters. Shion, for instance, is very knowledgeable about many topics, but lacks common sense, as the stereotyped genius she is. That's it, there goes about 90% of all jokes about her, and not particularly creative ones. Oh, eventually she reveals that she would like to have a younger sister and has Tama fulfill that role because it's cute. Yes, "because it's cute" and "because the public's desires must be satisfied" seem to be the main driving factors for GJ-bu. You've got tsunderes, maids, all kinds of hair colors, cat ears, little sisters, foreigners, heck, there's even cross-dressing for the girls and Kyoro. Everything is meticulously engineered to appeal the viewer through a specific stimulation. If the show had used at least half of the time spent on this planning towards making the characters and their context actually interesting, a great deal of its problems would have simply disappeared. Now that we've got the bad things out of the way, let's focus on the bright side. Since visual appeal is relevant to GJ-bu's purposes, it tries to build its own style, as colorful, cute and comfortable as possible. These efforts are mostly successful, but the character designs are easily forgettable, nothing you haven't seen in other moe shows, and the animation is only average. As for the soundtrack, it's pretty catchy, and a lot of effort is put into the ending's themes... still, they end up sounding quite generic as well. As a whole, though, the production values are all right. Now, after all of this, it could be concluded that this show is lame and boring, incapable of doing anything remarkable on its own. Well, there's nothing remarkable for sure, but surprisingly, it's still enjoyable. That's the ultimate secret of GJ-bu: it knows what it's doing. It was previously said that everything is meticulously engineered to appeal the viewer, and this becomes evident as the show goes on. GJ-bu's focus on quantity rather than quality may lose points in artistic and creative value, but it's an important trade-off. You don't like this girl? Oh, then have another, and another, and another, all with distinct specifications, until you have one that you like. The stereotyped personalities are very helpful because otherwise it would be difficult to do this. Real people have common mindsets and physical attributes due to sharing the same environment, many have similar goals and ideologies, are constantly changing or trying to change, show different sides of themselves depending on the context... Stereotypes, on the other hand, are static, simple, and make sure that two characters will be as different as possible. But surely there must be at least one grumpy old man who isn't charmed by any of the show's attempts, right? No problem. It may sound crazy, but GJ-bu doesn't deliver enjoyment solely from the viewer's love; hate is also effective. The series tries so hard to be cute and funny with its endless list of clichés, shallow characters and situations, fetishes and repetitive jokes that it turns into a laughable parody of itself for those who are not amused and become increasingly cynical. For example, the fact that the maid spins around every time she appears may either be seen as endearing or a pathetic attempt at being endearing. Both are acceptable, because GJ-bu doesn't care if it's being loved or hated, as long as it's not being ignored. GJ-bu is, quite literally, an anime for everyone. It has generic written all over it, but you end up either loving or hating it because it goes so overboard in applying all sorts of tested formulas. Truth be told, if you are a fan of this kind of series, has no problems with underdeveloped characters and poor storytelling, and want something with a sort of relaxed atmosphere and all types of cuteness, then try GJ-bu, as it probably won't disappoint. Otherwise, it's not advised to take the risk, but the show could be good for a few laughs; if not genuine, then mocking.
