DVD Review: Daily Lives of High School Boys (2012)

Posted by Retrokaiser On Wednesday, November 6, 2013 0 comments

Daily Lives of High School Boys is an animated comedy series about a group of ordinary boys who go to an ordinary all-boys high school.  The main characters in this mundane show are:  Tadakumi who is the more serious one that has a part time job working at a pizza place and despite being one the major characters he is often cut out of skits due to being "uninteresting" (don't worry, it's only an ongoing joke).  Hidenori is the more cheeky one who likes to mess around with his friends and likes to read on the riverbank while waiting for his friends to get off their job and is often stalked by a girl with long black hair.  Yoshitake is the delinquent of the group with blond hair and also likes to play around although he is kind of an idiot.  While not at school they are always hanging around at each others houses either playing video games, using their imaginations to come up with real life role playing games or just stealing their sisters panties and wearing them on their head while they wear their bras under their shirts... yeah maybe this show isn't as mundane as I thought. (Click "Read More" to read the full review).


This show is formatted just like a sketch comedy show like "Robot Chicken" and "Kids In The Hall" but with a loose storyline stringing them all together.  The comedy itself is hit or miss but mostly hit and it did make me laugh a whole bunch.  When the sketches are in the "miss" category it is not as bad as you think because normally "miss" means it is a train wreck but in this case it is mainly because you didn't get the joke and you won't get outraged because of it which is nice.  Some of the humor in this show did get a little weird but it did stop right before it got to the point of being disturbing.  The characters are really enjoyable and are (possibly) the most realistic portrayal of teenaged boys every seen in an anime.  The teenaged girls in this show are scary and remind me of girls I went to high school with as they are always yelling at each other and picking on all the boys.  The only difference between the girls in this show and the ones I went to high school with is that none of the girls in this show turn up to school pregnant and all from the same forty year old dude (bit of disturbing trivia from my life that just turned this review ultra creepy).  Moving on...


Artwork is fairly decent with nice simple character designs and some lovely sets that can look very beautiful and especially in the skits that are set during twilight hours.  Japanese dub suited the characters well but it is censored and no it's not because of bad language but because of mentioning of real world video games.  Yes every time someone mentions a real game (minus Square-Enix games) like "Super Mario Brothers" or "Sherlock Holmes Mystery" for the Famicom (AKA Nintendo Entertainment System) they bleep out the name.  This is very weird and I am not sure why they would do this although I do have several guesses.  Music soundtrack has a three main sounds which are: Punk Rock, Jazz, and Death Metal. All the sounds help add to the nature of the show where it'd be chaotic, relaxing, or romantic and it also sounds really good with some very catchy tunes used in the credit sequences.

Not a bad set of special features this set has as you get: Text-less opening and closing sequences and you must re-watch the closing credits as they are just simply brilliant.  You also get commercials that aired on Japanese television and a whole bunch of bonus episodes that appear exclusively in this DVD set.

Overall this was a very good comedy and was well worth watching.  If you don't watch subtitled anime you are missing out.  I defiantly recommend watching this one.

Title: Daily Lives of High School Boys
Animation Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Animation/Anime, Comedy/Sketch , Slice of Life
Running Time: 293 Minutes (12 Episodes)
Distributor: Hanabee Entertainment (http://www.hanabee.com.au/)
Rating: M15+ (Violence, coarse language)
Price: $59.99
Recommended: Yes

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