Teppen—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Laughing 'til You Cry

Teppen is one of my favourites in this season. The wackiness, the unreasonable boke, and fast pacing comedy is what I love in this. Tbh, this anime is the only comedy anime that cracks me up in this season. The approach is similar to Kill la Kill, i.e., over the top and fast-paced. Absurdness upon absurdness come like a barrage of machine-guns. Its only weakness is in the last episode, where some seriousness is present. To most people, the comedy is unfunny because it has layers. You need to know many japanese trivias to really grasp the meanings. But to me, comedy with more than 1layer is more interesting because it contains informations rather than laughs only. Seitokai Yakuindomo is one such instance where knowledge of kanji and dirty jokes is required. The other reason why I like this is that seiyuu's ability to deliver comedy is significant in their career. I have watched how veteran seiyuu in older comedy anime performed and they are marveous. Usually the ones that cannot deliver as good can be seen as newcomers or just not as experienced. Looking at these newcomers is something that I look forward to because some of them lately had matured into incredible seiyuus and in high demand. If you come for easy laughs, this anime is not recommended. If you otherwise look for trivias or layered comedy, this anime will be a good choice.

You know, I was a bit worried when I saw that Bushiroad was attached to this project, this being an adaptation of their manga in their magazine, my biggest fear is that, in the post-Milky Holmes era, their work has always stuck to the safe side and never takes any risks; anything even remotely interesting, Revue Starlight for instance, always ends up being restricted or constrained by the invisible hand of the committee, snuffing out any creative vision by the creative staff attached to it. With Teppen, my fears were thankfully unwarranted, as it’s single handedly Bushiroad’s wackiest and funniest show since Milky Holmes (funnysince Hercule and the Feathers are mains in this). Despite being themed around manzai, Teppen itself is rarely manzai. Rather, it uses its premise as an avenue to lead in to its wacky comedy. Perhaps for the better considering most other manzai shows end up being on the bland side for just having 20-minute long manzai routines. And you gotta hand it to Bushiroad for managing to keep the whole show fresh and varied throughout. I was initially afraid the sheer size of the cast would lead to bloat, but it never felt that way in the end as each group gets a chance to be in the spotlight and even individual members in each group has that one trait that makes them memorable, even if I can’t always remember their names and end up referring to them by their trust (eg. Mito Komon Ibaraki girl for instance) With the exception of maybe Young Wai-Wai, each group ends up representing a common region of Japan, be it one distinct prefecture or a few similar ones. There is a lot of playful prefecture vs prefecture banter here, and if you’re into this very niche yet specific genre of comedy, Teppen has got you covered until the next prefecture shilling show. Sure, the jokes don’t always land. For instance, the mythical episode 2, which was feared to be cancelled forever due to a certain incident, ended up just being an outdated and not very funny at all reference to 24, far far past the point where parodies of it are even topical. But Teppen throws out jokes and gags more frequently than it has exclamation marks, so you’re still in for a good time regardless. Teppen is certainly a show that came out of nowhere and I’m happy and thankful at the amount of creativity at display each episode. Now, I hope that hometown tax episode won’t be about Hokkaido again… 7/10

I honestly really enjoyed Teppen. At first, I was afraid it would be about a "group of girls doing comedy and competing against each other", but it turned out to be way better. Why did I decide to give it a 9? Because it made me laugh (or at least smile) too many times. I do agree not all of the jokes were funny, but if you're into random screams, quick weirdly escalated situations and situational comedy, then you'll definitely enjoy this show. This is not even about manzai - the manzai scenes in this anime are very rare, usually only for a few secondsat the beginning of every episode. The rest are always the girls laughing in the dorm and preparing for Teppen. This anime gives you a wide range of different and unique characters whose personalities surprisingly interested me so much I just wanted to know more about them. Now this anime is finally over - and I wish there was a second season. Again, no, this isn't a cliche unfunny manzai anime that bores you to death. It kinda screams gen z energy - completely random reactions, breaking the fourth wall, Japan prefecture jokes, etc. The opening was also fire. This anime is not for everyone, but it is enjoyable once you get used to the comedy it uses.

Here I am, questioning to myself again: yet another manzai comedy? And after the blandness that is Maesetsu! that only really speaks to the native Japanese (which everyone else will not understand), is Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And yes, that is 15 exclamation marks, the most after Keijo with 8) gonna be any different? In a hopeful way, I wish I do, because of all the manzai comedy that has been seen, Teppen is easily the best out of the lot that I remember, though not without its issues. We all understand comedy in all sorts of various ways. But when if it's one that's ingrained only to acertain demographic, that honestly is a bit hard to justify its existence to everyone else. And this is exactly what Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! has going for it, being a Japanese manzai a.k.a stand-up comedy that's all the rage in Japan as a traditional pastime. Unfortunately, if you don't understand much about that, I can tell you that it's hard to really love this show for all that's worth of its various references and such. The basis for Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is exactly what it sounds like: a group of girls incorporated into a competition (the Teppen Grand Prix) from the views of 3 new and aspiring young rookies (Yayoi Sakamoto, Yomogi Takahashi and Yuzu Hosono) whom want to make it big with comedy, and finding themselves living together with other groups with their own quirks and features, all in the vying to win the competition with the best they could. And I'll say that I give marks for some originality that's done here to showcase the various groups according to their regions (Young Wai-wai from Kansai (region), Celebri-Tea from Tokai, Akudare Kingdom from Kanto, Invaders from Hokkaido, and Bullet Kunoichi from Kansai (area)) and fully establishing the real-life counterpart identities from where they come from, for all 15 girls. As for the part of the show that supposedly wants to make the audience "Laughing 'til You Cry"...well that is pretty much a mixed bag. You either love it or find it boring (as is my case) that some references will be generally understood, but for a comedy skit performance, it isn't as refined as say the CGDCT moments for the group that lives in Takako-so under the watch of "Onegai Muscle" rip-off Manager-cum-caretaker Seiji Tani. Throughout the course of the anime showing the groups' various skits (at least on my watch), most of them were quite boring but not stale, as per the motive to infuse comedy where it works best. To this I say, maybe you can understand the inference better than I do, and there're two sides to the comedy coin in this case. The most impressive I've seen from this show is the mixed usage of Seiyuus that for a large character cast such as this, they did their job well to retain the feeling of infused, fine comedy. And this is brought forward to the OP, which is the most creative that I've both seen and heard of others calling it a banger, and it's not without reason that its over-the-top goofiness allows to embrace its intentions wholeheartedly. And largely for that, it succeeded. May'n's ED isn't half bad either, now that I think of it, especially when the OST is that subpar and generic, there were a few standouts, though it honestly didn't make my experience watching this any better, even with studio Drive's whack-outta-the-wazoo like visuals, which also got the job done as it should. It's absurd, it's wacky, it's just comedy. And believe me, I've tried to like Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and what it has going for it, but it's just boring and ludicrious to sit for 12 episodes expecting to understand references and body jokes, to the point of messing with my brain and thinking: "Comedy can be better than this, and it doesn't have to be limited after all." Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s definitely not a snoozefest, but a sleepfest of a dream with sheep baaing question marks on top of my head, now that's more affirmative.