Chou Futsuu Toshi Kashiwa Densetsu R

- How could you even move without your umbilical cable? - It's umbilivable. - Did you notice? This conversation took up more than two pages in the script and didn't contain a single setup-punchline. That's about half an episode for a 5-minute anime. - If that's true, then who did this, and why? - Aliens. The “Plebs Can’t Appreciate Minimalism” episode. Chou Futsuu Toshi Kashiwa Densetsu R is technically a third season of the series, but you don’t really need to watch the first two. Those are youtube ONAs seemingly done by a single person on a half a cup of ramen budget, basically an amateur hobby project. The audience likedthose well enough to get the third season crowdfunded, thus it could afford luxuries like the TV broadcast, an actual recording studio, and character designs by a professional (Nakamichi Hirou of Houkago Saikoro Club fame). His designs are, in fact, the main draw, animation being just the stills of characters overlaid over real-life footage of Kashiwa. The story is vaguely about supernatural phenomena occurring in the city of Kashiwa, Chiba - but not really, it’s a gag comedy. As it is very typical for low-budget comedic shorts, the humor is based around surreal skits, pop-culture references, and self-deprecating/fourth-wall-breaking jokes. The humor is functional, jokes being actual jokes, not the “lol, random” attempts at humor common in the worst examples of this type of series. The cast of seven main characters has simplistic, but well-defined and consistent personalities (e.g. a tsukkomi). All the side characters are cameos by the crowdfunding backers, and those are incorporated in a clever and endearing way. Sound design is on point, both the voice-acting and the music, with a catchy ED song. Overall it’s a competent low-budget comedic short that knows exactly what its limitations are and how to make the best out of what it has to work with. And if you think basic competence is not much of an achievement - you’d be very wrong, it is literally the best show of the Summer 2020 season (granted this season was abysmal because corona, duh) by virtue of not fucking anything up. 9/10.