This Week in Anime

Class is in Session

Chris
Steve, class is in session today to learn something that anime can hopefully help us with.

What is school?

It's been a year or twenty since I was in high school, so you'd think a wholesome comedy within those hallowed walls might remind me of the institution of study and learning that it's nominally supposed to be. But as is often the case with school comedy anime, vanishingly little studying or learning actually happens. I mean, there is education, but of the more...unconventional variety.

One of the main reasons it even came up is that a rebooted version of Kimengumi is on the docket to release next season, seemingly another in the endless stream of retro reboots that anime indulges now. Except instead of something like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½ where it's part of a larger lineage from a storied creator, High School! Kimengumi is one major pillar in the evergreen art of poking fun at the experiences of our youth.

And hey, in their earnest efforts to get these kinds of classics out in front of more eyeballs, REMOW had the old series up streaming on their YouTube channel, so there was never a better time to enroll in this silly, silly school.

I love that they upload the batches in "binge mode" with just one instance of the OP and ED at either end. Gave me an unexpected surge of nostalgia for Funimation's old DVD sets, thank you.

Kimengumi doesn't have the historically recounted notoriety here of REMOW's similarly streamed KochiKame, but that makes its rollout even more impressive. Especially since, as you say, it's more of a limit-pushing show than one might think! I know going in I expected a school comedy that originated in 1980 to maybe be a little more low-key, but from the jump, Kimengumi is a very...out-there thing. Complimentary? I think?

I mean, it took Super Sentai far for 50 years.

It's funny that the Funny-Face Club is the one nominally defined by the looks, since pretty much everyone gets a turn here.

Never mind high school comedies, this series is foundational to the fine art of face game in anime.

Last month, I saw an art museum exhibit that featured Fujio Akatsuka pages; it's totally legit.

Given the antics in this school comedy are filled out by multiple sets of guys doing various absurdist slapstick routines, you might think it would make sense to bring the audience along with a viewpoint character who's normal, down-to-earth, and primed to react realistically to all the classroom chaos that occurs. But as was quickly established, there is nothing "normal" about High School! Kimengumi and similarly, nothing normal about Kawa Yui.

Just a regular day at school. Never mind that these guys are at the higher end of the morality spectrum of the groups on this campus.

That first episode thus also quickly gets to the heart of what Kimengumi is about, alongside so many other school stories: the various cliques the students find themselves sorted into, and how that affects the way they express themselves when it comes to fitting into society. See, foundational!

I'd say surely an episode of the original Urusei Yatsura must've gotten around to it, but I can't speak for the whole run of that show. Given how much I'll always go to bat for the fine art of the baseball episode, I was delighted to have this one pop up in the batch of Kimengumi I sampled for this column. It's a pretty great one, too, predicated as it is on the main characters pointedly not knowing how to play baseball.

It also speaks to why this sort of sidebar is such a natural choice for school-age shows (Haruhi Suzumiya and Sonny Boy both had one) on account of the inherent youthful appeal of the sport.

Silly as they can be, shows like Kimengumi are still, at their heart, about capturing the feeling and joy of our school days.

Maybe in another ten years, this can be nostalgia for the kids who brought "Let him cook!" into the vernacular.

The retro-ness of Kimengumi can be interesting to reckon with alongside its nostalgia and how bold its comedy was willing to be. One of the Funny-Face Club, Dai, is presented as gay in a way that's both surprising to see in a project this old and also mired in some tired tropes.

I jumped around in my viewing, mostly to get in some later episodes where High School! Kimengumi actually took place in high school. But it'd be interesting to go through and see how these kinds of socio-historical markers are apparent through the show. To say nothing of how they might be updated in the apparently set-in-present-day reboot anime that's forthcoming.

Anime is so inundated with high school antics that it's kind of a cliché complaint to note the overabundance of the setting. It means there's something of an arms race on craziness to stand out, going from series like Azumanga Daioh to Nichijou.

Kimengumi informed and can even arguably stand toe-to-toe with that level of wackiness, but it might not stand out as much.

The Osomatsu-san possibility is exactly where my mind went upon learning about the reboot as well. Still, there have been other guy-focused comedies out there across generations. I think Cromartie High School is actually the most direct successor to Kimengumi, in its predilections for out-there non sequiturs and funny faces.

Watching it now, I could absolutely see how Kimengumi could be construed as the Seinfeld to Cromartie's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

I don't know if Kimengumi ever introduced Freddie Mercury into its cast, but the era means it absolutely could.

As I said, it's a product of its times in some ways, but way ahead of its times in other ways.

You aren't the only one now, and you probably wouldn't have been in 1985 either.

And you said this series isn't smart.

I will say, knowing that Kimengumi keeps on introducing new sets of schoolkid Sentai squads beyond the ones at the beginning, does increase my interest in keeping an eye on these marathon sessions. I mean, obviously, it had plenty to cook with, being an anime that ran for over 80 episodes (as comedies were allowed to do back in the day). But I really respect Shinzawa's dedication to just introducing more silly ideas to keep the series going.

To say nothing of what a modern reboot could bring in.

As far as successive examples go, I've got people in my life who would never let me live it down if I didn't mention Daily Lives of High School Boys as another comedy centered on silly guys (that also let girls get in on the action). But it's been over a decade since that one; we are well overdue for new guys.

And I think the success of reboots like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½, Takahashi's pedigree aside, shows that audiences are still primed to show up for retro-style teenage antics.

I particularly like the amount of panning effects they included; you could just tell they were having a great time pulling this off in animation.

Mostly because it shows up multiple times and in multiple of the OPs!

In that respect, it's probably for the best that the reboot seems to be going for its own style alongside its setting. Has life, but in more of a 2020s way than that rich '80s style. And hey, at least the girl gang is confirmed to still be in!

Alongside other classic options like Tubi and RetroCrush, I hope REMOW keeps doing this for series like Kimengumi. It's foundational to a whole genre we take for granted these days. Seeing it makes it clear how the show and that genre lasted as long as they did.

It actually gives me hope for the current era of anime availability, apart from (gestures) everything else happening in there right now. Because we never would've gotten a show like Kimengumi on disc here back in the day, and it'd be a long shot to even see a release today.

I always had faith in the funny faces.