“I see! This must be a club where all they do is have tea and snacks!”
Summary
Yamato Yura is a freshman at Stella Jogakuin, an ojou-sama type school for rich, high-class girls. For Yura-chan, everything is beautiful and nothing hurts – it’s a chance for her to overcome her shyness and make lots of new friends. The receptionist tells her that she’s rooming with Kashima Sonora, a third-year, in a fancy hotel-style room. Yura-chan wonders what kind of person Sonora is, and hopes she’ll be a kind senpai to her. Then she sees the gun under her pillow…
Impression
Having crazy senpai is a thing now, isn’t it. And that applies especially to this season. I think Love Lab runs on something similar to this premise too – Stella Jogakuin is supposed to be a high school comprising of refined, classy girls who are entirely prim and proper. Then that image is horribly torn apart once the C3-bu show up, who are weirdly hilarious in their attempts to recruit similarly like-minded weirdos to join their military club. I must admit, the military was a bit of a shock to me too…I didn’t think the term “survival game” would be taken literally. It’s the last thing you’d expect from a fancy girls-only school like Stella – even Yura-chan thought it was the keion-bu a club that just sat around eating cake and drinking tea, but they clearly had other ideas about the kind of stuff they do…stuff like war games. It’s okay though, they’re just paintballs 😀 Nowhere near the hardcore epic tank blasting that was Girls und Panzer. Damn, I still miss that show.
For Yura-chan, all she wants from this fairytale high school life is to make some friends, and I think Gainax did well in portraying all her insecurities. It wasn’t only that Cinderella analogy but also her interactions with some of the first people she met – Yura-chan never did mention she was shy and had trouble making friends until after we saw her trying her hardest to talk to that girl, and admiring all these people with “shining social lives” who get along easily. I’m sure she’ll lose these worries after being with the C3-bu for a bit – she reacted well to the gun under her pillow well enough after all xD And they feed her cake! Who doesn’t want free cake?
The C3-bu seem to know themselves well – at least they’re fully aware that, as exciting as military survival games may be, their hobby is far too niche to attract attention. That’s probably why Rento was so excited to see Yura-chan secretly play-acting with a gun while having a military film play in the background (she probably still thought Sonora was in a drama club of some sort). She’s finally found a freshman weird enough to join their crazy, crazy club! It’s okay Yura-chan, I’m sure your shining social life is waiting with these people 😀
The slice of life and comedy aspects are great, however I felt the actual military game itself fell short slightly. The jazz music in the background was cool, but it somehow didn’t feel as enthralling as I thought it would (I should probably stop comparing this to Girls und Panzer now). Karila abandoning her machine gun and knifing people was fun, but other than that I think it’ll have to step up its game. Maybe Sonora’s proper introduction will do that?
Possibility of Watching: High
Possibility of Blogging: Moderate
Stay tuned for Eva’s impression!