This review was originally written on June 27th 2016 This season I had only planned to watch Sailor Moon Crystal and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. But a couple of other shows this one Shounen Maid and a few others caught my attention and I wound up trying them out. Im glad to say they all turned out good Sansha Sanyou being one such show. Lets face it the sliceoflife genre nowadays mostly consists of creators trying to make girls come off as unrealistically cute and moe as possible complete with squeaky voices ridiculous storylines pandering etc. Granted not all shows are like this but otakus have become the primary consumers in Japan when it comes to anime so from a business perspective usually businesses go for what they know the audience will consume whether they put out poor quality products or not. Sansha Sanyou definitely isnt a masterpiece as nothing will ever be but thankfully despite its cliche premise it manages to be better than most moe sliceoflife shows. Like most moe shows there isnt really much of a plotline here. All its really about is three girls from different backgrounds becoming friends right off the bat simply by running into each other: Yoko Nishikawa the former rich girl whose fathers business became bankrupt and is now poor as dirt and oddly enough she adjusts to it pretty well Teru Hayama the class representative and cat lover who seems nice but supposedly hides some evil dark side and Futaba Odagiri the obligatory cheerful and gluttonous girl who does nothing but eat disporportionate amounts of food. Through random shenanigans inside or outside of school they somehow manage to become friends. Joining their circle are Shino Sonobe Yokos former maid Yamaji Yokos very overprotective former butler and sometimes random strangers inside and outside of school such as the local mean girl Serina and her sidekick Asako. Hijinks ensue. Okay I need to get this elephant out of the room right now: Yokos character design looks EXACTLY the same as that of Sumire Hikami from Aikatsu season three See? 220https://s4.anilist.co/file/anilistcdn/character/large/33802vuoIiVKSDxvB.png 220https://s4.anilist.co/file/anilistcdn/character/large/b88522nGiM6Va6FS6d.png Same shade of purple hair same hair length same eye color same polite personality same upper class background even all the way down to the same voice actresses for the Japanese versions The only differences are their chest sizes and that Yoko is more haughty and Sumire is more timid I know Sansha Sanyous manga came out YEARS before Aikatsu did but come on you cant not notice the blatant mirror images the character designs create Its almost like the creators of Aikatsu completely ripped off Yokos design to make Sumire and the fact that the Sansha Sanyou anime came out THIRTEEN YEARS after its manga was created and a couple years after Aikatsu doesnt excuse the similarities either so that has to say something Alright back to the important stuff. The animation is for the most part quite good. Its really smooth a lot of the time especially when it comes to fluid movement and when characters move they move. The character designs are a bit more down to earth this time around and arent ridiculously exaggerated from the more restrained hair colors to more naturalistic hair styles and realistic anatomical proportions which is very refreshing. There is one problem with the animation though: its too bright Its like someone turned the brightness almost up to its highest setting and Im pretty sure that amount of brightness can hurt someones eyes. I personally had no problem with it and eventually got used to it but I can imagine others not being able to adjust well to it. The music...isnt much to write home about. The opening and ending themes are far too squeaky and fast paced but the background music is pretty nice and set the mood and atmosphere well though it still isnt particularly memorable. Sorry but there isnt much to say about it. The characters...this is a hard one. For the most part theyre arguably a mixed bag. Theyre not complex or anything like that but theyre decent enough with some not so welloff exceptions. Teru and oddly enough the local mean girl Serina happen to be the best characters. The rest of them are pretty funny albeit still bland and not full of much flavor but decent enough and theyre definitely not bad. However there are three exceptions: Futaba and those annoying blue haired twins. Futaba is just a complete nonentity as a main character. Her only character traits are that shes cheerful and loves eating. Thats it. Theres nothing else to her. Literally ALL she does is act cheerful and eat disproportionate amounts of food in every single episode and doesnt contribute to anything at all exacerbated by her extremely irritating voice. Seriously her voice actress sounds like shes trying WAY too hard to sound cute but comes off as grating and shrill instead. Megumi Han can pull it off but Futabas seiyuu just cant. But even worse are those blue haired twins who just hate Futaba simply for the fact that she wins all those allyoucaneat contests and dont have any other personality or character than that. I think the show could have benefited had those twins been cut out of the story because not only are they completely useless and annoying they dont add anything to either the other characters or the story itself. So...Futaba and the Tsuji twins: worst characters. The rest of them are...decent. The story itself is very episodic in nature and theres nothing to really get invested in. Its just the three girls going through school and life and having fun and being friends. But I can definitely give it this: the situations most of the time arent NEARLY as boring or ridiculous as those of...I dont know Kiniro Mosaic. At least the girls act like regular human beings most of the time sans Futaba and the blue haired twins and arent completely made up of pandering moe traits Plus the comedy was actually surprisingly good. I have to admit the jokes about the token sortaloli maid Shino who is actually in her thirties but stopped growing were actually pretty funny and handled very tastefully. I do find the final episode to be...really odd. What was the point of it? Everything in it just seemed to be thrown in there without much thought or substance whatsoever. Oh well. Its better than other final episodes Ive seen Kimi to Boku and Uta no Princesama season one anyone?. So...yeah not the best slice of life moe anime out there but it definitely stands out from the bad ones. If you can get past the bright animation style and some useless characters its a pretty good little time killer.
76 /100
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