Wasteful Days of High School Girls

Irina

6 years ago

Wasteful days

Genre : Comedy, Slice of life, school, yurish
Episodes: 12
Studio: Passione

High school is the busiest time in a young woman’s life. It’s a time when she has to figure out what she’s going to do with the rest of her life, who she wants to be with and just generally what kind of person she is and wants to become. There is so much going on. Everything is changing at breakneck speed and everything is left to be learned. It’s a miracle high school girls get any sleep at all. So naturally, high school is the best time to waste as much time as possible on “amazing” ideas and idle thoughts. High school can be stressful but it can also be hilarious.

I’ll be honest with you, I wanted to watch Wasteful Days of High School Girls pretty much as soon as it got announced but didn’t get to it as it was airing and then couldn’t find it on my streaming platforms. So now, I actually got HiDive mostly for this one show. (I really like HiDive, I’m glad I took the plunge). And the reason I wanted to see Wasteful Days of High School Girls so much??? The title was vaguely evocative of Daily Lives of High School Boys. That’s all. I looked into it after watching the show and the two really have nothing to do with each other at all. Hooray for informed decisions!

look we all do things on a whim sometimes…

I really like comedies. Actual HAHA slapstick comedies as opposed to the more common MOE or CGDCT genre which I also like for different reasons. I only make the distinction because traditionally these two genres have very different art styles and visuals. To put it bluntly, I really like comedies but they’re often kind of…ugly… OK not ugly but maybe a little flat? Moe and Cute character animes bank a lot on visuals as part of the appeal. As such they often have very beautiful colour palettes and really adorable designs. Straight up comedies (in my experience) tend towards simplistic and easy to distort designs that aren’t bad but are rarely that special. And for some reason they often have very saturated but restrained colour palettes. The aforementioned Daily Lives would be an example, Saiki K is another that comes to mind. I love both of these shows and I think some of those characters are quite scrumptious but you know what I mean. Right? Man I hope you know what I mean. Cause if you don’t I just wasted a lot of both our time. How fitting!

Anyways, I just said all that to tell you, Wasteful Days of High School Girls isn’t like that! Do they have amateur reviewer awards? I feel like I just earned one!

Wasteful Days of High School Girls is really great to look at. I love all the character designs, the backgrounds are simple but nicely rendered and scenes feel full. I particularly liked Akane’s (Wota) bedroom and was even a bit jealous. Then I realized I love my bedroom. The visual world is nice and lively with background characters milling around and animation is fluid and pleasant to watch.

It’s a well crafted show and maybe I’m being unfair but it’s much nicer looking than I expected from a comedy.

Narratively speaking, well it did in fact remind me a whole lot of Daily Lives of High School Boys. That’s why I looked it up, I was sort of convinced they had been written by the same person. Turns out, not at all. Wasteful days is based on a pixiv comic written by an very talented young lady. I’m really happy to we’ve gotten to a point where pixiv artists can get an anime made based on the quality of their work. It’s sort of inspiring.

I went on a tangent there. That’s o.k., this show does that a lot. It’s essentially a series of absurdist or observational jokes strewn together. Unlike Daily Lives or even Saiki, instead of being short sketches with a constant setup – punchline rhythm, Wasteful Days is more structurally similar to a sitcom where the jokes are all brought together in a loose episode specific plot, often with a B plot thrown in. As such there is a bit more continuity in the delivery and less jokes to leave more room for development. This said, the type of humour is pretty much the same.

the reinvented running to school with toast joke felt like a smart hommage

And that’s a good thing. Wasteful Days of High School Girls made me actually laugh out loud a few times which is not that common for shows to do. Some of the jokes were quite brilliant and I got pretty attached to the characters in only 12 episodes as they served as more than just vehicles for jokes and even got individual character arcs. This cast was really well developed in just one season. On the downside, this tweak in structure meant that boring episodes really dragged on and if a joke or premise wasn’t my thing I was stuck with it for close to a half hour instead of just a few minutes.

Still, I thought this show was utterly enjoyable and an easy distraction for when you are in the mood for a few laughs. I was very happy I randomly watched it on a completely mistaken assumption that was all in my head. So if like me you enjoyed the Daily Lives of High School Boys, I would recommend Wasteful Days of High School Girls, the two have nothing to do with each other….

Also, because I think this post is not nearly confusing enough, here is my favourite Daily Lives of High School Boys sketch. Still one of my favourite comedy sketches.