Review: 'Keijo!!!!!!!!'

Anime: Keijo!!!!!!!!

Genre: Comedy, Sports

Age Rating: Good for All

Studio: Xebec

Music: Hayato Matsuo

Author: Daichi Sorayomi

Dub/Sub: Subtitles

Ecchi Level: Otaku (No actual nudity, but plenty of close calls)

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I had heard of this anime through other channels, and decided to give it a go because I needed something to watch between writing derivative fiction and transcribing. And to be honest, it filled the role of "not having anything else to watch" anime quite nicely. You can consider that a plus or minus.

Basically, the anime takes place in modern-day Japan, where one of the biggest forms of extreme sports of all is known as Keijo, the sport of women trying to knock other women off of a floating island using only their butts or busts. I've got to say, that would probably be pretty entertaining to watch. However, this anime cranks it up to the next level by giving each girl almost super-human abilities with their aforementioned body parts.

Now, just from the description of this anime, it should sound pretty entertaining. And to be honest, it was kinda fun to watch. But the only time I really outright laughed at this comedy was when the girls used their powers. The names of some of the moves had me facepalming and laughing at the same time. Unfortunately, other than that, most of the comedy falls flat, and a lot of that is due to the lack of personality of the characters.

They tried, and you can see that. But it didn't work. Rather than giving each character a unique, individual personality, it looks like the author just copy/pasted stereotypical anime trope personalities onto each of the characters. There was the main character, Nozomi Kaminashi, the bright and energetic over achiever. Then Sayaka Miyata, the strong but silent type. And Non Toyoguchi, the ditzy airhead. And finally, Kazane Aoba, the highly intelligent but shy girl. All of them were so trope-ish that I actually had to look their names up after this due to a lack of remembering them. They even tried to add in accents to further identify them, but it didn't work, as most of them seemed to have forgotten the accents halfway through the series.

Due to the lack of personality, the comedic scenes between the characters felt really bland rather than funny. The only one that I actually found funny was Mio Kusakai, and that's just because she kept flirting with the other girls relentlessly. Other than that, however, the only comedy I personally got from this show was the over the top, outright ridiculous moves that the girls did. I'll put a list of the best I saw below:

• Buttack on Titan
• Rackupressure
• Buttwind Sandstorm
• Shoryucans
• Quickdraw Gazongas

If you don't get the references from two of those, then you're a failure as an anime fan. Despite the comedy that these names brought me, I felt it tried a little too hard in some places, especially near the end of the series. They all but outright made fart jokes, which, despite being universal comedy, are not good comedy. This form of comedy tried to extend even further with a magician actively having cards flying out of her butt, which pretty much got an eyeroll from me.

As for the rest of the anime, the story telling was sub-par at best. It was basically a simple rehash of most academy anime. Girl goes to academy, she impresses the teachers, but loses to someone who's better. She gets better, then they have another battle where the less talented face the more talented again. Insert training montage related to basic menial work that has nothing to do with the sport, then comes a big tournament. This script has basically been taken from other anime without adding anything of its own to the formula to make it better...except for the move names of course. Hell, the show even contradicts itself by making the moves all about physics in the beginning of the series (despite the physics being outrageous), then later on adding shit like qi into their attacks, which basically destroys any decent creativity that goes into them.

The animation in day to day life is nothing special, but excels during the battles themselves. And the music was so forgettable that I didn't even realize there was music in the series until I looked it up for this review. But aside from the moves, there's really nothing that they could put into a trailer that would draw you to this series. The best compliment I can give it is that it kept me entertained for two days. Also, I have a bit of a rage at the artist for something he did at the end of the series, but I'll put that in the spoilers.

There's really nothing much left to say. It killed a weekend for me. And I probably won't remember it in T-Minus 1 day. Heh, there's another reference for you.

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TLDR: As mentioned above, it killed a weekend. And that's probably the best thing I can say about it. If you like gratuitous amounts of female anatomy flying around, then you might enjoy this. I'd almost say it's worth watching just for the special moves, but that's only supplemented by the fact that the series is really short. Otherwise, I wouldn't have minded missing it. It could have definitely benefited from actually putting nudity in it. It might have gone up a single digit then.

Ratings

Animation: 7/10

Music: 3/10Story: 4/10

Comedy: 7/10

Overall Rating: 5/10

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SPOILER TALK:

Best Girl: Kazane Aoba. Because she's adorable, really smart, AND LITERALLY THE ONLY FUCKING GIRL IN THE ENTIRE SERIES TO USE STRATEGY! Everyone else is basically one move after the other until they win. She is the only one who ever actually thinks about what she does in battle. Also, her Gate of Bootylon attack was by far the funniest looking attack in the whole series.

So, really the only fucking thing that I specifically despised about this series was the fact that there was zero nudity throughout the whole series, yet for some reason the dickhead animator put some kind of boob monster with a nipple on its head at the end of the series. Call it petty, but if he could do that, then why the fuck not put them in the series!? Okay, I'm over it, and over this anime.