When Dropout Idol Fruit Tart aired in Fall 2020, it was one of many shows I bounced off of because… Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle and TONIKAWA: Over The Moon For You and Talentless Nana AND Akudama Drive were airing that season. With my watchlist as full as it was, I dropped Dropout Idol Fruit Tart when it didn't grab my attention by episode 3. Flashforward to Fall 2021, where I'm revisiting it to see if this was secretly the dark horse of Fall 2020, or if it's better left behind in a distant season.

A short disclaimer before I start the review: I decided to watch the dub for this, which doesn't have subtitles as of November 2021. That might change in the future, but for now, if you want subtitles, your only option is to watch it with the original Japanese voices: fans of dub are kind of up accessibility creek without a proverbial paddle. Still, with that in mind, I chose to watch the dub specifically because Dropout Idol Fruit Tart has songs in it, and I was intensely curious about how the dub handled these segments. Spoiler alert: the songs are still in Japanese, which is… a bit of a letdown, but doesn't really detract from the dub's quality otherwise.

The story follows idol group Fruit Tart which is… full of misfits. There's just no way around it: they're all dysfunctional high schoolers, each embodying a specific series of tropes as they try to figure out how to gel as idols under Rat Production's banner and roommates in the Mouse House dormitory. Why? Well, because they're forced to, and if they don't find a way to make their mark and find success, their dormitory – and their three curry meals a day – will be gone. And as premises go, it's pretty okay: the characters are cute enough, though nothing about them stands out. Still, all of these are perfectly serviceable ingredients for an idol show full of comedy. Structurally, Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is split between idol antics and school life. By alternating between the girls as upcoming idols and as high schoolers, we get a pretty solid foundation for a slice of life series that has light K-ON! (but idols) vibes.

Sadly, Fruit Tart misses the mark for a number of reasons. The most prominent is that the show leans heavily on “yuri” humor as a source of comedy. Except… it's not funny. The punchline is always “ew, you can't really like girls” or some deviation of that never succeeded in making me laugh. In fact, I don't think I laughed more than a handful of times throughout my watch, which isn't good for a series that's explicitly a comedy. This running gag of the girls taking potshots at a potentially queer reading of their sexuality feels like the kind of joke that was funny to me as a college student when I thought my queer lesbianism was still a phase, instead of being an intrinsic part of who I am; in other words, it's the kind of humor that can cut like glass, even if it's packaged in a colorful, “funny” idol comedy. It's not helped by having a character who is occasionally portrayed as an actual predatory lesbian. And like, as a queer person, I get laughing about sexuality: I do it on the daily, though it's never at anyone's expense. However, Dropout Idol Fruit Tart never feels like it's laughing with the girls: it's explicitly laughing at them whenever they show any kind of sapphic interest. It's either wrapped up in a “it's okay to call girls cute but don't make it gay” veneer or “don't make it weird” veneer, and both suck.

Another issue with the show's humor is its heavy reliance on fanservice. To put it bluntly, Dropout Idol Fruit Tart has a boob joke problem: one of the main characters, Nina, is 90% boob jokes, 10% personality, and even that's really, really skint on the details. I wish I am exaggerating, but from the very first episode, we get Nina's shirt busting open in a very jiggly sequence that stops short of an AWOOGAH! AWOOGAH!! HOMMINA HOMMINA HOMMINA!!! sound effect. It's genuinely that blatant and discomforting, which only grows more prominent as the show goes on and even their manager starts to sexualize the girls, which *sigh* isn't great, even if the girls call their manager out on being an absolute pervert. And to the show's credit, it's not just Nina: every one of the girls of the main idol group gets smacked with the fanservice stick, which could be potentially funny...if the characters were college-aged adults and not minors. (The ED is similarly shameless; I won't go into detail, but suffice to say that the camera leers at their teenage bodies in a blatantly sexual way) Even then, I'm not sure if these elements of Dropout Idol Fruit Tart would come across as funny instead of discomforting, largely because it feels like the jokes are made for the viewer at the expense of the girls.

Then again, this is a seinen series, and trust me: Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is incredibly aware of its target masculine audience, almost to its detriment. And while I'm definitely not male, I'm not so sure that this is a service to men: the assumption that gags about wanting to inappropriately grope girls – including an elementary school student – numerous times are funny kind of makes me mad for everyone. And while comedy is subjective, and fanservice can certainly be enjoyable, scenes like Nina's breast jiggling around like the world's worst aspic mold just feel skeevy in a way that undermines a potentially charming series.

Thankfully, that's the biggest blight on the series because visually speaking, Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is very, very cute: it's got a really pleasantly bright color palette paired with pastels and iconic, eye-catching colors for each of the girls. It certainly adds that “spring of our youth” vibe to this series about the world's most desperate idols who have to figure out how to idol before they're homeless. On the aural side of things, the show has solid enough music and sound design, though nothing ever stands out. The same could be said about the songs and performances, which I find to be perfectly likable but not much else. They've got really cute songs that sit in that happy middle palace of “sounds cute” and “pleasantly generic” without being particularly outstanding. That's not to say they're enjoyable: it's just that you're probably not going to be buying this series' CDs anytime soon.

You also can't forget the cast behind Fruit Tart. We've got some heavy hitters really bringing their A-game: Kira Buckland stars as Ino Sakura, Sarah Anne Williams brings a bit of levity as Roko Sekino, Laura Stahl shines as Hayu Nukui, Xanthe Huynh (who voices Ai in Kageki Shojo!! and immediately had me hyped) comes in swinging as Nina Maehara, and Kayli Mills brings up the rear as Hemo Midori. Together, these five shape the titular idol group Fruit Tart into a fairly likeable group of underdogs, though they definitely get hampered by having to adhere to a frequently unfunny script.

Overall, I won't say Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is particularly memorable, at least not for any positive reasons. I'll remember it for being “that one idol anime that's way too horny with too many boob jokes” and not much else. The show's brand of humor is never really funny, and coupled with its tendency to make light of yuri, it can be a lot to handle. I'd much rather have left the weird sexual humor at the door in exchange for the really excellent aspects of this adaptation.