Joshiraku

Part of my anime club mandatory watch. Joshiraku is a 2012 anime made by J.C. Staff, I would say it came out at the time JC Staff was kind of in its prime. Am I crazy for saying that? Maybe at least judging by how weeb culture was at the time, but it felt like so much of their stuff that came out before 2012 was so popular wherever I went. Watching this now felt like a huge throwback, specifically the one scene where the girls accidentally got off at the train station near the convention center and got stampeded by a ton of people cosplaying JC Staff chars. Obviously this was done for licensing reasons, but the sheer amount of characters that were so popular at the time was actually quite huge.

This is one of those comedy anime that heavily rely on puns, references and the likeability of the main characters to keep you engaged. It's very otaku bait-y but you know what, I'll be honest, it kept me completely engaged from start to finish. I didn't find it hilarious, but it was a fun watch. It was extremely, extremely meta though. The type of meta jokes you'd see in gintama from time to time, except a lot more prevalent. Very tongue in cheek at times too. Most likely it's because it represents an era at which I really got into anime, but I really miss this period of general otaku culture. I'm aware this is pure nostalgia speaking...

The fact that this is an anime about adult female rakugo performers and rakugo is actually such a small part of the show, and the characters look... well they look like typical high schoolers in anime is what makes this whole setting kind of baity, in a "hey you greasy sweaty otaku that only likes cgdct - you'll like this too because you don't actually care about the setting, you only care about cute girls"... I'm not sure whether to love that or hate that. But it's also kind of what I've been saying in the past, literally the setting doesn't matter, you can make them marine biologists and the things they'd talk about would still be pretty much the same, we can move past the high school setting just fine because in the end we're showing this idealized version of female interactions that doesn't really exist, it's more like a way for the mangaka to transmit quirky and fun conversations by catching your attention with cute girls. More often than not it feels like the cg part of the cgdct are just a vessel, it's like some form of theater. Which is also why I was never a huge fan of such anime, but I think this one caters to me enough that I found it entertaining. Most of the times I'm not even a fan of super referential humor either, I dropped My Deer Friend Nokotan so quicky...

All in all... I'd recommend this if you are/were a massive weeb in the early 2010's. It's got a comfy feel to it I genuinely struggle to come across in this genre of otaku-ish anime nowadays.

Oh and my favourite character is definitely Kukuru, her brand of morbid jokes were a highlight of the show lmao