Do It Yourself!!

A feel-good show through and through. Definitely one of the better original SoL CGDCTs available in recent years. The premise of this show is nothing out of the ordinary. As the title suggests, the show revolves around a group of HS girls who form a Do It Yourself (DIY) club. They make everything from scratch, from book shelves to bracelets, and even the club's holy grail, a tree house. The show simply follows the standard CGDCT formula. Even so, the interactions between the cast members are genuine and leave you smiling. Fan favorite and clumsy girl Yua Serufu, "Yourself" pun intended, is the main vocal point ofthe club that keeps the club in tact and has the wholesome genuine vibe. Jobko, my personal favorite, the tech-savvy girl, enhances the show with her English accent and occasional English word pronunciation. Everyone in the cast is necessary and complements one another. Even the pet pig is sometimes the brunt of jokes, and its reactions definitely left an impression on me. Art wise, it is very unique and definitely accentuates the vibe of the show. It is unquestionably one of the show's strong points. In terms of animation, it is nothing out of the ordinary, but it is very fluid. Even the show's somewhat low-resolution still frames contribute to the overall feel of the show. Pine Jam did an excellent job of making the show stand out. As for the OP and ED, they definitely add to the show's overall appeal. The OP conveys the message "Rise and shine, it is a brand new day for another exciting adventure", with the accompanying visuals doing the same. The ED, on the other hand, gives off the "Day has ended and it is time to pack up and go home" vibe, as do the accompanying visuals. Both the OP and ED have the opposite vibe and complement one another. Regarding the VAs, despite the fact that there are many new VAs on the block, I have to commend them on a job well done. As I previously stated, this is especially true for Jobko and her English accent and code switching. Honestly, this show is appropriate for all audiences, but it is clearly aimed at SoL / CGDCT fans. The pacing is slow, and the show gives you a relaxed and chilled vibe. It is one of your turn off your brain shows that you can watch whenever you want. This show is definitely worth watching. I would recommend it to anyone interested in trying out SoL / CGDCT shows.

*Do it Yourself!!* is so unassuming that one would be inclined to come away with the initial impression that it’s not anything more than just cute girls doing cute things: the woodshop edition. And you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong; on the surface, it plays the formula in much the same way as it has been employed in countless other anime before it. Niche hobby, relaxed atmosphere, low stakes, the whole nine yards(tick). Why should anyone walk into a show like this and expect something different, or different enough that it would become one of the more-pleasing anime of the season? Even if someone was willing totake a chance on it, goodness knows that the show also had its own uphill battle to climb. Fall 2022 was, to put it in one term, top-heavy. Between the highly-anticipated juggernaut *Chainsaw Man* and desired sequels *Bleach: The Thousand-Year War*, *Mob Psycho 100 III*, and *Spy x Family Part 2*, a show like *Do It Yourself!!* stood no chance of etching itself onto the landscape at-large. Even when *Bocchi the Rock!* managed to do it, that was an unexpected dark horse. A happy one to be sure, but an exception nevertheless. *Do it Yourself!!* thus seemed condemned to be lost in their wake, suppressed by the sheer extent of their mark. But that reality, in truth, is why the show managed to succeed so well. Whereas other shows announced their presence with boisterous explosiveness or an unexpected comedic jolt to the senses, *Do it Yourself!!* started more gradually. When we’re introduced to the anime’s world, its aesthetic is markedly cutesier and more juvenile. That is not an insult in this case; rather, it’s a perfect visual sign that the show will kick back its feet and let simplicity take the reins. The aesthetic of the show, when it’s not adopting its musically jazzy time in montage or its delightfully-catchy OP, feels fresh out of a children’s coloring book – the color palette employed is simple, but it propelled by its splashes of beautiful lighting and animations. It is not the type of animation that will be immortalized forever, but the level of care gives its simplicity more verve and spunk. Serufu is likewise a charmingly-simple protagonist, klutzy and always seemingly with her head in the clouds rather than her feet on the ground. There’s a disarming appeal in how she always takes misfortune on the chin (sometimes literally given how often she’s covered in Band-Aids), allowing herself to be impressed by others around her or have her friend Purin’s insults bounce off her like rubber, much to Purin’s consternation. She coasts on by, often right into a telephone poll. She meets Rei, the senpai of the show, who introduces her to the world of DIY crafts after helping fix Serufu’s bike, and one clever little pokingly-fun pun later, the show sets itself into proper motion. Coming to stop by the club include the shy-but-capable Takumi, the self-confident and obscenely-rich Juliet Queen Elizabeth VIII (which, yes, that is her name, and it is glorious), and the energetic and ninja-like Shii, all while Serufu’s old friend Purin watches the oddball group from afar. “Oddball” not only defines the group as a whole, but it similarly characterizes the humor. *Do it Yourself!!* does not rely nearly so heavily on setups and punchlines; if anything, the way I described the pun earlier as “pokingly-fun” is the most-appropriate descriptor. Given the sometimes-weird nature of the characters, both individually and as a group, any time is prime time for a little barb, a little cutoff, or a little moment for someone to be temporarily fascinated with someone else. Scenes therefore have a little spark that allows comedy to come from any direction and from essentially anyone. They have their moment arise naturally out of the dialogue and dynamic, then gradually fade away into the background. So when Shii scampers up a tree like Spider-Man or Rei and Takumi obsess over a mutual love of manga, the scene carries on seamlessly when the moment is done like no pause had occurred. But when it decides to pause, it works well! DIY is not just a little framework to make the show fit into some kind of mold. *Do it Yourself!!* wisely takes the time to let us know how exactly the various goods and crafts are made, which is more than can be said for other shows around niche hobbies in its genre. I’ll confess upfront that I have never been blessed with good hands for DIY. I am not a woodworker, handyman, or anything closely resembling that nature; putting together a chair this past summer was more hassle than I’d like to admit. Not all of the crafts are immediately feasible—I wouldn’t know where to get my hands on a decent UV light for hardening gels—yet I didn’t care. The show treats its audience like it treats Serufu, a newcomer to this type of craft that might need help knowing what to do and when to do it. The show, in essence, takes it upon itself to be the teacher. I cannot say that I remember how to make everything the show demonstrated, but I enjoyed seeing the process at work and play out into finished objects. The care in showing the crafts be made step by step is not the only way the show shows its cohesiveness. It’s made clear throughout the narrative that the club members are not just a hodgepodge of girls hanging out together and doing whatever is in the anime’s name. Rather, they are and actually function like a team, actively seeking to help one another when something either goes wrong or needs to be worked on. Especially as the increasingly-apparent competence of the other DIY Club members makes its presence known, Serufu is notably left behind. Jobko, Rei, and Shii are all good with their hands, but even early on, newcomer Takumi works to create the colorful mosaic to hang outside the school’s clubhouse. Serufu bumbles about trying to do something as plain as work an electronic screwdriver correctly. This does beg the question of why let the narrative focus so much on Serufu. The show, fantastically, has an answer. Serufu is a walking accident waiting to happen—put the hammer down, Serufu!—but her contributions to the club are not limited to simply making things. I remarked before that one trait to describe her was “disarming,” which each character at various points in the story comes to experience for themselves in her wake. Even when the show operates under the veneer of giving the other characters their time in the sun, Serufu is always right beside them, encouraging them with unapologetic, sincere positivity and getting them to admit or realize something about being in the club that they might not have either understood or wanted to admit, or perhaps even wanted to try. To put it in terms the show would use, if the other club members are the tools in the shop (the saw, the screw, the hammer, and the straight-edge), Serufu is the superglue that keeps it all together. Serufu’s usefulness to the story is only insubstantial if one limits their understanding of the DIY Club and DIY as a whole to the things that are made and how finely-polished they are. If Serufu were out of the picture, it’s fair to say that everyone’s lives would have been a lot lonelier. Because she’s so enthused, there’s a mutual admiration that is collectively shared among everyone in a way that comes across as so earnest and sweet that it makes the mundanity meaningful. Serufu’s handiness comes not in the house for Meat—it makes sense in context, I promise—nor the charms they make. Her handiness is in talking with Purin on the boat, cute nicknames, always trying to make new friends, and letting the good times roll. The DIY Club, with all its members smiling and enjoying themselves, is her masterpiece. It may have been forged from incongruous parts with the instruction manual thrown into a paper shredder (after getting jammed first because, let’s be real for a minute, it would happen if Serufu did it), but hold their form they do. *Do it Yourself!!* never could have wrestled with the larger monoliths that the season had, but it didn’t need to. What the show did was adopt something plain with just enough of the right blend of sugar, spice, and everything nice. It needed no high-fantasy; it just needed a saw. It needed no bloody splashes; it just needed a lot of Band-Aids. In setting itself apart from everything surrounding it, it carved its own cozy little corner handicraft in my anime season, and whether one wants to observe from a distance to see the overall shape or get in close to see the times Serufu accidentally screwed in something incorrectly, it was wholly its own. In that sense, the show “did it itself,” which is so beautifully poetic in its own way.

While Bocchi the Rock may be this season’s slice of life talk of the town, Do it Yourself! holds the SoL crown for me. A truly fun, educational and heart warming tale about 6 very different girls, brought together by their love of handicrafts. DIY in many ways feels like an open love letter to the medium. You can’t help but get sucked into the beautifully rendered backgrounds and environments. The plot is simple yet engaging and the characters are all so rich, loveable and interesting. It’s really a simple formula that is executed to perfection by Pine Jam. The show is equal parts fun andeducational. In fact, watching the anime made me get into some simple DIY tasks around the house and I’m proud of how they turned out. Motivating viewers to get up and better themselves is truly the mark of an amazing series. Seeing the girls building new things week after week sounds mundane, but it is legitimately one of the most cathartic de-stressing activities you can do. I enjoyed seeing the girls overcome obstacles in front of them whether it was building a table or building a secret hideout for the club. The banter between the girls was great and the voice acting was top notch as well. Like most slice of life shows, all of the girls got their own mini arcs and I felt they did good jobs of expanding upon their characters, while not conflicting with the laid back mood of the show too much. Of particular note was Juliet’s and Miku’s which were my faves. Speaking of Miku, her character design is without a doubt one of my faves all time. Something about short haired girls with multi coloured hair/eyebrows. As previously stated, the art is really beautiful in this show. I like how they went for a more “anime-y” look as opposed to the hyper realistic designs that shows constantly go with these days, though considering this is the same studio that brought us Kageki shoujo, I should not be too surprised. It’s so difficult to come up with and follow through on a GOOD anime original show, but Pine Jam laid a good foundation that can be followed by other studios here. Come up CGDCT where the girls teach the audience genuinely useful information. Profit. After long days this was such a pleasant show to come home to and I will really miss all of these girls so much. I would love if we got some type of manga continuation of the story, but in the meantime, make sure you check out this gem. Do it Yourself! Gets 10 crafts out of 10.

DIY, it can mean 1001 things, but my dear children, it most importantly stands for: Do It...Yourself. Wait what? Duu eet yoor serufu? The Fall 2022 season has been one of (if not) THE strongest seasons I've seen in almost half a decade ever since going the seasonal route, and there were a fair few shows that are on everybody's radar, from the much-hyped Chainsaw Man to even Bleach's final arc that is the Thousand-Year Blood War. But if there's a genre you absolutely CANNOT discount this season, it's the CGDCT genre that surprisingly pops, from the "surprise, surprise" much-celebrated Bocchi the Rock!, to the plainershow that is "Do It Yourself!!". And did I say plain? Yes, I did, though this anime sure feels like one plain snoozefest, I assure you that it's not, and definitely worth its slice-of-life, laid-back nature that is worth every detail and nip of enjoyment. Being an original anime (which there're more coming out very recently), it's a given that this passion project is birthed out of something. The concept laid by producer Avex Pictures is a norm for one, but have you wondered who is the mysterious IMAGO also being credited for this show? This, you won't find it anywhere else more than a coincidence that the name happens to be a term in Dennou Coil, a passion project of living legend Mitsuo Iso. Sure enough, DIY the Animation's lead producer Tomohiko Iwase is a long-time acquaintance of Iso who recently produced The Orbital Children, so that may also feel like a contrived series of coincidences, as is the fact that the surprisingly rich world-building that feels strongly reminiscent of his delightfully quirky near-futures. And the series' writer Kazuyuki Fudeyasu is also quite seasoned in a lot of diverse anime being a veteran, and it's really a no-brainer that I really come to trust him as one of the good writers in the anime industry over the years to deliver even basic things like this, handled with the best of his talents. The staff team behind DIY the Animation is superb to say the least, but what's a show without its characters, and this show uses them to full effect in a very mesmerizing way possible. The plot itself you can read through the synopsis, it's quite detailed thanks to the folks at MAL Rewrite, but the TL; DR is essentially Mitsuo Iso's idealism of a near-future world where technology has taken over much of the world's evolution, and the ways of the old are being left behind in the dust. Kinda beats a reference to the IRL we live in nowadays hits hard isn't it, where even the most seasoned crafts one day will fall into obscurity? Sure, feels like it. Any who, in a certain part of Japan, there exists 2 schools: Yuyu Girls' Vocational and Gatagata Girls, each of them serving a different trait: YuuVoc in technological advancement; Gata Girls' in traditionalism. And this serves the basis for the 2 main characters: Miku "Purin" Suride and Serufu Yua, attending in the respective schools they originated from. Serufu's accident-prone personality may have come with a blessing in disguise: the senior Rei Yasaku, whom is the head of Gatagata Girls' DIY club, a club that was said to have a rich history that with the advent of technology, have quickly come obsolete and behind in the times, needing to fulfill members for the usual school club quota, or risk disbandment. But still, the passion of DIY keeps Rei going forward, and after having the usual run-in-the-mill accident, Serufu is brought to the club in the hopes that this will be her final nail in the coffin that could reconciliate her relationship with Miku or end up being strangers. Immediately, the characters do stand out for their uniqueness. Miku using technology to her full potential, and Serufu being very hands-on with stuff, it's already bound that these childhood friends-cum-neighbours have a feud against each other, but not in the way that you expect. While Serufu is more easy-going but accident-prone, Miku is that "close" friend who's always watching over the heads of friends, and being characteristically jealous at what they do, the most prominent being Miku's not-so-honest tsundere personality to reflect at her composure towards Serufu. It's certainly predictable, but you gotta do what you gotta do, and Serufu's kind-hearted, sweet and naiveté personality does help out in that regard to eventually pull Miku over to the DIY side. A quick mention that Serufu's house is full of pets: the dog Pochi, the cat Tama, and the best of all: the pig Meat, because it can't help but shudder EVERY SINGLE TIME pork is mentioned, it's a good running gag. Also, in case you didn't realize it yet, all the names are homonyms from the Japanese name order: Pochi is a very common dog name, as is Tama for cats, and both Serufu's name and Miku's nickname put togther, spell out "Yourself" and is a pun on "3D Print" (Suride Purin) respectively. How creative is that? Slowly, more characters are subsequently introduced as well: - Takumi "Takumin" Hirage, a somewhat shy classmate of Serufu's, and someone that needs pushing (some, but not a lot) to do what she likes to do. - Kouki Kokoro, the Southeast Asian girl that's a female version of Tarzan being very energetic, and oh so much with the cat-like personality, meow. She's Miku's clingy best friend who always calls her "Suridecchi". - Juliet Queen Elizabeth VIII, the American that sounds like royalty, but is in actuality a child genius, with wealth and resources to boot in using technology to assist in her projects. The only questionable part is her affluent Japanese, as she mixed up her enrollment and ended up in Serufu's school instead of Miku's. The long-winded named girl doesn't like her name, so she is given the nickname of Jokbo, a homonym of Serufu always saying "Good job!" - Haruko Hoketsu, the school nurse at Gata Girls', and advisor for the DIY Club. She always attends to Serufu being an accident-prone kid with a perfect accidental record. But if I have to pick out one character that inflicted me the most, it's Serufu herself. Being that calm and collected, yet accidental friend who's always patched up in bandages, she's the true definition of the show in every regard: not just learning how to make stuff, but accidents do happen in handicraft, and take or leave it that Serufu is all that clumsy, it's what makes her character stand out the most. Truly, one of my best new characters worth the adjective of the waifu (or I guess, Shoujo) bait. Even more surprising, this is newbie Seiyuu Konomi Inagaki's first-ever main role in her 1st year of VA work (starting with Winter's Slow Loop), and I can already tell that whatever of her future's gonna come, it will be just as bright and cheerful as Serufu herself. IKEA the Animation may look decent like molasses to objectified people who feel like this show isn't for them, but I can understand the appeal why. But, to really highlight how amazing this show is, you've really gotta look into the staff team behind this. Studio Pine Jam has only been in the anime industry as long as I started watching seasonal anime (about 5 years at this point), but aside from its mainstay in-house director Kazuhiro Yoneda, it's evident that it has distinct visuals and designs, made probable by the one and only Yuusuke “Fugo” Matsuo, an animator once helmed at KyoAni, who left to build his career for the years ahead being character designer and chief animation director for the Yama no Susume a.k.a Encouragement of Climb series (with the current Season 4 (Next Summit) also airing this season), as well as The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls series. Yuusuke Matsuo may single-handedly be the reason why lots of people are drawn into the show with his cartoony fun and naturalism in body language, made possible with his greatest strength of character design and animation philosophy. And you can tell in every regard that DIY the Animation takes its basic formula and wraps it around in a mind of state, something akin to teaching people how to do things, and it did just that to give its audience a good time. It's not so much a flex to have talent like this with animation this technically superlative but also frictionless, and the scene compositions being quite deliberate, yet so casually inviting that there is indeed no feeling of pressure to it. A lot of anime can offer the same relaxing trend, but you’ll struggle to find one that is so lax in nature across all its creative aspects, and DIY the Animation to me, is absurdly wild and beautiful all at the same time. Not to mention, the character theme songs are so gosh darn great that it makes for such a compelling OST to listen to. While the OP gives the sense of whimsical, joy-like harmony equivalent to a sing-along session, Serufu and Miku's ED is just as good for a cooldown to relax at the episodes' end (the acoustic guitar's rift, damn, I felt that). I especially love the visuals coupling the songs: the fun and harmonious beats of the characters ooze out so much personality in the OP, while the ED is just some nice melodrama of Serufu's house pets having their time playing around in their own musical craft. Still hot on the heels of one of the best CGDCT shows I've ever watched this year (that would be Spring's Healer Girl), I totally understand that if the genre has nothing to fulfill but it's typical slice-of-life-ish sequences that could bore out people, but its the notion that gets you, and for that, DIY the Animation really hits my heart hard, of a time that I used to have creating handicraft, getting injured sometimes (not as much as Serufu) and the most important of all: the meaning of having fun with friends alike. I know I will definitely miss this show like a paper-thin notebook ready to be used for arts and craft, and with that, the CGDCT genre has finally hit its peak in 2022. It's a relaxing time in a much-hyped season such as this, and it's worth the watch, no matter how much love or hate that this show gets. It's just incredible. Let's say it together: DIY - Duu Eet Yua Serufu!