Review: Wagamama High Spec

Being a short series is a blessing and a curse. Because of the length it has to really go out of its way to be bad but similarly has to try really hard to stand out amongst the rest. Does WagaHigh do either or neither?

There is no plot here (in the game there is though) which for a short series is fine. It follows the same setup as the game. Bunch of girls (and guy you don’t see) are in the student council doing various things as you’d expect by a student council which we get to see. By that I mean any hijinks or funny moments not the nitty-gritty of what student councils presumably do.

This is fine and the vast majority of times I did get a chuckle out of it. You’ve got your fan service elements such as a trip to the pool or removing clothes to bear the heat (my favourite episodes by far), creating a new recipe, looking after a cat and more. None of the episodes were boring as there was a variety of scenes to keep it relatively fresh from episode to episode.

My problem is that it’s, well, just there. We see these girls and despite their names popping up every episode I could not for the life of me remember any of them without looking them up. The length of the episodes is a result of this and the other part is that the characters are disposable in general. Sure some girls have their own quirks which you remember them by but you don’t get enough of an insight to become interested in them.

The animation is nothing to write home about, standard fare for a show of this type. The character designs are nice enough and fit into the ‘moe’ aesthetic and that is really just what they have to be. The soundtrack is kind of one note and bland but the OP is as sugary and sweet and charming as you’d expect.

One thing that doesn’t work in its favour is that at the end of each episode there is a minute or two where the characters discuss something extra such as what happens in the game or expanding on what they do. This is fine but they do it in cardboard like cut-outs of the art from the game. This shows the chasm in difference between the game art (lovingly done by character illustrator Tsumire Utsunomiya) and the anime art. It disappoints you that they took something that nice and altered it to such a degree. In general for VN adaptations you accept that but here it actively shows you the difference which makes it worse.

It’s hard to criticise this series as it doesn’t do anything wrong per say, none of it is bad but none of it musters anything more than a chuckle or a smile. That said you cannot really praise it as anything its done has been done before and better by countless series. It is something you will see time and again if you haven’t already but it is effectively 2 minutes per episode so I can’t hold any ill feelings towards it. The one thing it has done though is make me want to play the game so job done I guess?

Studio: AXsiZ

Aired: Spring 2016

Available: Streaming

Episodes: 12

5/10