Do It Yourself !!- Just Short of Great

It seems that PINE JAM has been around for a few years but I had personally never seen anything of theirs before. I really like the art style of Do It Yourself!!. The colours as well. Great soft colours that are just so relaxing to look at.

I know that the character designs and therefore the art style was probably dictated by the manga and the pastel hues are just a Cute girl anime staple but what can I say, I thought they combined to create something really nice to look at.

I have written a few times that certain shows in this genre look great but simply don’t stand out and end up being interchangeable with other shows in my mind, as far as the visuals are concerned. Well, that’s not the case here. I thought the sharpness of the character designs made them more memorable and the little visual touches, like Serufu’s pets, that all look like they came out of a children’s show or the constant drones in the sky (I wonder if that’s in the manga cause it was NEVER explained) kept my attention on the images on the screen.

I find that anime fans tend to be of two minds when it comes to Slice of Life as a genre. Some will think that nothing much happens in these shows and might even accuse them of being an excuse to watch cute anime girls and not much else, therefore finding the genre boring. Others will say that these are shows where nothing really happens but are a great excuse to watch cute anime girls and are therefore great!

I jest. I actually quite like Slice of Life anime. In fact, I have always been a huge fan of stories that can be described as “nothing much happens” both in and outside of anime. I think it takes talent to tell a small tale and that there is beauty in the mundane. However, I understand that the genre will not be for those seeking thrills and twists.

Do It Yourself!! is no exception. It’s a fairly tame little story about a bunch of girls joining the Do It Yourself club at school. The climax of the show is when they build a small treehouse together. As I write this I can’t help but think how is that nothing much? Building a treehouse is super cool. I wish I had built one in school. Heck, I kinda want to build one now but I’m afraid of hurting the trees and myself. I’m not really making much sense here. Let me try again.

Do It Yourself!! does have a plot, one that could be used to make a fairly eventful storyline. However, the show chooses to go a more meandering route without too much connection between episodes, and as such, the end result feels fairly directionless. Yes, there is a specific destination but we’re taking the scenic route and we’ll get there when we get there. And that is part of the charm of the show.

It’s nice that episodes aren’t all hyper-focused on a specific goal. That way, we can just follow along with Serufu and her friends and enjoy the moment rather than think about what comes next. I did feel like the show lacked some follow-through at times. As I mentioned in my synopsis, Serufu is very clumsy. In early episodes they really insist on it, making it a defining part of her character. But then it’s like the show forgets about it for episodes at the time and when it shows up again it’s more of a very minor inconvenience. She comes off as not crafty rather than terminally clumsy like she was presented.

Miku is a tsundere character who is mad because she feels left behind by her friend but she just kind of gets over it. At the very end of the series, we learn that one of the main characters lost their mother and has had a strained relationship with their father ever since. That information is just dropped in the last episodes and we don’t know if that relationship is ever salvaged. A lot of the relationships and themes in Do It Yourself don’t get resolved and I’m not sure if that’s a flaw in the writing or a feature.

Little things like that give me the impression that the series either adapted everything in the manga as it came up and didn’t bother to tie up loose ends if those plotlines are dealt with later on in the manga. Or that the author occasionally lost track of minor b-plots. It’s a small grievance but it did mess with the flow of the series for me.

There are so many things I really liked about Do It Yourself!! and it could have easily become one of my favourites but I also had a slight issue with the characters. You see, there’s nothing really wrong with them but to me, they felt kind of flat. Like nice girls and all but that’s it. Serufu was a bit too much of a space cadet and she didn’t have a proper foil in the show to counter that so she was very difficult to relate to, at least for me. She felt more like a caricature and that clashed with the rest of the cast.

As for the rest, well they are all nice characters with their own personalities but again, I just never felt like I got to know any of them properly. It isn’t as bad as when I watched Miss Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles, but I got the same type of vibe. That the characters had been given a handful of traits each and that’s pretty much it. Basically, they got developed in spurts and I felt like they needed more time to really get fleshed out. For me, this lack of depth in the characterization hindered my enjoyment. I ended up liking the show but I didn’t love it. And I think I would have if it featured slightly stronger characters.

You don’t mind lighter characterizaton and enjoy a nice show about not much.

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