Kenjiro TsudaAkira IshidaTaku YashiroSayaka Senbongi
Outburst Dreamer Boys
Episode 1 also reviewed here: Anime 1st episodes 2019: O
Also known as: Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy
Medium: TV, series
Year: 2019
Director: Kazuya Ichikawa
Writer: Midori Gotou
Actor: Akira Ishida, Chinatsu Akasaki, Daiki Yamashita, Hideaki Kabumoto, Junya Enoki, Kenjiro Tsuda, Mina Katahira, Rikuya Yasuda, Sayaka Senbongi, Shugo Nakamura, Taku Yashiro
Keywords: anime
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Format: 11 episodes + a 12th OVA
Url: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=21982
Website category: Anime 2019
Review date: 17 November 2020
Chubyo Gekihatsu Boy
It's very funny. I had a great time with it, despite a couple of speed bumps.
Hijiri is about to become a reluctant member of the Minakami High School Hero Club. She's normal. She's horrified by reality-challenged loons, i.e. her club members. These include:
(a) Yamato Noda (aka. "Red"), who's an indomitable tokusatsu superhero, fighting with his teammates to save the world! (WARNING: in his head only.) He's actually lovable, though. He's small, does lots of dramatic posing and loves ridiculous physical feats. He also has the kind of never-say-die optimism that normally exists only in children's cartoons.
(b) Kazuhiro Nakamura (aka. "Black"), the reincarnation of a devil and an angel who has to seal his cursed magical powers or else the world is doomed! (WARNING: in his head only.) "Aeons before the gods created mankind, I battled these fiends." When he starts proclaiming, a church organ starts playing on the soundtrack. He's a worse case than Noda, who's at least aware of living in the real world, but they're tying for melodramatic gestures.
(c) Tomoki Takashima (aka. "Yellow"), who's the best-looking boy in the school... until you realise that he's in love with a 2D girl in a mobile phone game. He talks about nothing else. He catches buses because they're doing a tie-in game promotion.
(d+e) Rei Tsukumo and Futaba Mikuriya ("Green" and "Purple"), two cool, good-looking boys with attitude. Yeah, the show's got plans for undercutting that.
Noda regards them all as Super Sentai Power Rangers, which is why he's given them colours. Hijiri keeps objecting that she's not "Pink", possibly because in Japanese it has adult connotations. (Noda of course is oblivious to such things.) Anyway, that's an entertaining cast. You could get a funny episode from locking them in a cupboard for 25 minutes, let alone unleashing them on the world. Together, they're the Hero Club, on a mission to help anyone who asks for it! What's more, they're surprisingly good at this. Some random number of Heroes will probably achieve complete lift-off from reality on any given mission, but they always seem to satisfy their clients.
The show has two-and-a-half problems:
1. Futaba Mikuriya returns from Los Angeles in ep.4 and he sounds like it. The actor's American accent is very natural, actually, but it's still unpleasant to listen to. Stop it, Mikuriya. Talk one language at a time, please. I'm begging you. I got used to him eventually, though.
2. The school's Student Council are the designated antagonists. Their glasses look like Cybermen's eyes and they've had a sense of humour bypass. They disapprove of the Hero Club, naturally. Eventually, they'll kick our heroes out of their club room and forbid them from practicing club activities... which is where my eyes rolled. They don't have the authority to do that. They said so themselves. (Club room, yes. However they can't order anyone to stop helping people, especially when the heroes aren't an official club and are doing it out of school hours.)
I might still have believed it had the scriptwriters humanised the council. Had the president hated the club... okay, yeah, he'd have been an idiot, but it would have worked as dramatic justification. However it's not personal. They're just bureaucrats-in-waiting with a stick up their arse.
2.5. Ep.7 has Hijiri trying to trick the Hero Club into behaving themselves, without simply telling them what she's doing and why. Admittedly trying to talk sense into those lunatics would be a dauntingly Sisyphean talk, but even so that episode's one long facepalm.
Despite those, though, this is still a thoroughly recommendable show. You could technically call it reverse-harem, but it's far more entertaining than most of that genre. (Also, Hijiri would sooner chew off her arm at the shoulder than contemplate any of the heroes romantically. The show's chaste.) The ham drama club is great. The show's tone is spot on, mining endless comedy from its fruitcake heroes without ever mocking or losing its affection for them. It's warm and likeable. (It does have those hiccups, though.)