At Miyagami private Academy there exists a group of girls who wield more authority than any adult staff member... Theyre known as Miyagami Academys Maximum Authority Wielding Best Student Council otherwise known as Best Student Council And after a series of unfortunate tragedies leaves one young teenage girl orphaned and homeless they may be her only hope for salvation. Not long after the passing of her mother young Rino Randou was contacted by the mysterious Mr. Poppet who set her up with both an allexpensespaid apartment and entry to the elite Miyagami Academy. Since her only other ally in the world was a sentient puppet named Puuchan she had no other choice but to accept his generosity only to find the apartment and all her belongings burned to a crisp upon her arrival. This leaves her with one option... Join the Best Student Council with the Presidentand founder of the school personally selecting her as a secretary and live rent free on campus. Things should be smooth sailing from there but will relying too much on the charity of others come at a steep price? No. No it wont. Best Student Council was produced by JC Staff and if were being brutally honest here they dont give every single one of their projects the budget needed to stand out. This was especially true around the mid2000s when quite a few cheaper looking titles were coming out of the studio. You may remember that this show came out around the same time as Loveless which might seem promising as the director of Loveless at least TRIED to compensate for the meager resources he was given. Unfortunately the main director for Best Student Council was Yoshiaki Iwasaki who is by no means the worst director in anime history... He can do some pretty impressive work when given a decent budget I mean I think he did a good job directing Familiar of Zero and Hayate the Combat Butler... But he does not know how to work around a shoestring budget with any kind of finesse and if you need any proof of this he directed the Love Hina anime. The entire thing. The series that carelessly ended halfway through the story and the OVAs that tried and failed to make up for it. Well I guess its fair to say that my biggest complaint about this animes visuals cant really be blamed on him... Best Student Council is stuck in the archaic 4:3 aspect ratio which is a symptom of the time it was created and while some older anime have been upgraded for widescreen this one fervently has not and while this aspect ratio isnt a disaster for EVERY anime thats stuck in it it does this particular anime no favors. This is a show with a large colorful cast taking place in a sprawling elaborate environment and it needed to exist in widescreen to take advantage of all of that but alas that will never happen. Again thats not Iwasakis fault by any means but Im willing to bet everything else is. There are occasional bursts of kinetic movement but the animation is mostly stiff with characters freezing and not blinking when theyre not actively talking constant recycled animation cycles and some blisteringly obvious lowbudget visual effects. I also noticed one particular detail that I cant say Ive ever seen before in any previous anime. Sometimes when characters are a distance away from the camera the animators seem to have skimped on lip flaps. A characters mouth will either hang open or remain closed while theyre talking. You might not notice this at first but once you do its inescapable. Also embarrassingly noticeable is how once in a while you catch characters faces going offmodel in some downright discomforting ways. Still speaking of the characters their designs are okay. Theres a significantly large cast in this show and to their credit they do look distinct from one another and memorable enough that their identities and gimmicks will stick with you even if their names might not. The uniforms arent generic looking but their colors are just muted enough to not become distracting and there is some variety in the way different characters wear them. Still while the possibilities may be endless with a setting like this one its presentation is a little light on imagination. This might sound weird as Ive criticized his style in the past but I feel like Akiyuki Shimbou would have been a much better choice to direct this series as it would have fit right in with his comedic sensibilities and it would have been a perfect outlet for his creative energy. The English dub is a time capsule of ADV Films regulars. Yeah there are a few actors like Monica Rial Brittany Karbowski and Luci Christian who spent the 2000s dividing their time between Funimation and ADV but most of their actors were companyexclusives and most of their companyexclusives were attached to this project. Everybody pretty much performs as well as youd expect them to in their roles with the exception of Serena Varghese whose voice has a helium squeak to it that Ive never liked and Hilary Haag who did an outstanding job as Kaori but probably the most interesting casting choice was Kira Vincent Davis as both Rino Randou and Puchan. Now when I call this casting interesting Im not saying it was unexpected or unconventional... Rather whats interesting is Daviss position in the company at the time. Take this with a grain of salt because this is pure speculation on my part but back in the earlymid 2000s it really felt like ADV were trying to push Kira Vincent Davis as one of their biggest stars. They were giving her leading role after leading role a good amount of which required her to play two characters in one... Lucy and Nyuu Adult Valkyrie and child Valkyrie Ropponmatsu 2 and a bunch of Puchus and now Rino and Puuchan who were originally played by separate actors in the sub. Looking back it kinda feels like they were trying to shape her into a sort of jack of all trades voice actor... Someone with a natural low register who could create unique voices at a higher pitch and who had just enough of a chameleonic quality that you couldnt immediately tell any of her characters belonged to her. Basically they were trying to turn her into a prototype of what Emily Neves would eventually become and as much as I hate to say this I dont think Davis was quite as talented as ADV wanted her to be. She was by no means a bad voice actor but when I compare the scope of her work to Neves its not a flattering comparison. In any case when ADV went under less than a year after this anime came out Davis was one of quite a few voice actors who just disappeared for seven long years until ADV made a comeback as Sentai Filmworks and started hiring them again. Yeah I know Kira came back a few times for Strike Witches in those lost years but that was it. Was this a contractual thing? Did these actors just not want to make the drive? I dont know but its an interesting footnote in dubbing history. And yeah this is a good dub sorry I got sidetracked but I didnt really have anything else to say about it. So why the fuck am I reviewing Best Student Council? Why do I keep reviewing anime that nobody cares about anymore and that probably a dozen people have seen in the last decade? Do I just feel compelled to write long reviews about anime that I have some kind of personal history with? Yeah pretty much. I was introduced to this anime around the time the dub was released in US stores. I was at my local anime store and they were playing a promotional compilation of dubbed anime episodes on their TV and I saw a scene where Rino was sitting at a council meeting asleep while a puppet spoke for her moving her arm to converse with the others. I was sold. It was cute it was quirky it was a little creepy so I bought the first five episode DVD and... It was okay. I kinda wanted to see more but this was around the time that I exclusively watched anime on DVD and almost never streamed anything online so I kinda sat on that volume until the entire series came out. I bought it and I honestly dont remember what I thought of the full series but I did trade it in at some point so probably not much. And after revisiting it now I can kinda understand why. First off there are two main gimmicks that are the pillars of this anime and Im going to start with the stronger one Puuchan. I once said it was worth watching Magical Play because it featured a living fish coat and a sentient cat bra and I feel sort of the same way about Best Student Council an anime whose second best character is a sentient hand puppet with a mind of its own and a straightforward attitude to boot. To its credit this anime is well aware of who its mascot is he is featured prominently in every episode and the concept surrounding him is explored in some genuinely creative and amusing ways. The absurdity of his existence is not ignored which helps a lot with preserving some level of suspension of disbelief and yet they dont dwell on it once his authenticity is established... In fact after the episode where his true nature is established the main cast just accepts him as a sentient puppet with people outside the main cast being shocked as a pretty effective running gag. The secret behind his identity is eventually revealed but it kinda falls flat as a twist because it really does come out of nowhere. Still if there is a reason to check out this series its Puuchan. Which doesnt bode well for the other gimmick the student council itself. Now a student council with supreme authority over the school does SOUND like a breeding ground for creativity but it does not turn out that way. Yeah there are some gags about the president having the freedom to throw around absurd amounts of money and do whatever she pleases but theyre few and far between and there are still a ton of ideas left on the table. The rest of the student body outside of the council rarely ever figures into a story with most episodes centering around the councils slice of life antics which unfortunately involve a lot of tired slice of life tropes with only a few pretty shallow twists. Even the explanation behind the school doesnt make any sense... Apparently the student council president founded the very school shes attending which raises way too many questions that never get addressed. Yeah founding the school gives her supreme authority but where did she go while it was being built? And I cant put my finger on why but this does not feel like a school thats only been in existence for a few years. The overall cast is also not very strong. To be clear it doesnt have nearly as bad of a bloating problem as Kancolle did at least you can tell these characters apart without much trouble but theyre also not THAT interesting. There are a few likeable characters like the earnest Kaori AKA the best character who provides a much needed foil for Rino and Puuchan while never becoming too combative over them. Theres Puuchan obviously. Theres also Mayura the council treasurer whose complaints about the budget provide a fairly unique callout of the Presidents obscene displays of wealth. The two vice presidents are kind of interesting especially with their underlings serving as extensions of their roles in the story. There are bound to be some fan favorites among the rest of the cast but most characters can be boiled down to one interchangeable gimmick apiece which is actually more than I can say for two of the primary characters Rino Randou herself and President Kanade. The Student Council president is a very bland character. For most of the series all she really does is coddle and enable Rino and solve every problem she sees with either casual indifference or just throwing money at the problem. She gets a little more depth towards the end of the series having to deal with some kind of conflict with her company or whatever but I had a hard time staying awake through those episodes. Rino in turn is an incredibly weak protagonist who wears out her welcome embarrassingly fast in comparison with her charismatic puppet counterpart. Shes supposed to be your stereotypical airheaded character but Ive seen this archetype played way better before and sometimes by Kira Vincent Davis herself. I mean at least Osaka was funny. She never really justifies her presence in the council aside from one or two moments where the writers hint at her being the heart and soul of the council but the council doesnt feel any more unified with her than they felt without her. We never even find out who Mister Poppet was at least as far as I can recall. Watching Best Student Council is the anime equivalent of watching nonstop cat videos. Its cute. Its very cute and not in a flowery girly kind of way but in a way that like a cat its constantly off in its own little world doing things that make no sense to anybody else and not really worrying about how people perceive it. Its happy to be dumb in fact its downright blissful about it. With the exception of a few very boring episodes that are just dead on arrival the writing is fairly quirky and unpredictable and you can never really tell what direction its going to go next yet neither does it feel calculated in its randomness. Sometimes its funny. Sometimes its heartfelt. Sometimes it does something brilliant like the Yugioh parody episode where a club member creates a card game out of her council members and uses their real life flaws as inspiration. I like that episode. But most of the time its either boring frustrating or cringey. Thus also like a string of cat videos it is best consumed in small doses at a time because this kind of brainless directionless entertainment can only be fulfilling for so long until your attention starts to wander towards other things. Its kinda hard to be mad at an anime like this one but its also kinda hard to recommend it. Best Student Council is long out of print from ADV Films and was never rescued or rereleased. Its also not available on any legit streaming sites. A manga counterpart that ran alongside the series and a Playstation 2 game that actually exists were never brought to the states. Reviewing a comedy anime is always tricky because comedy has always been subjective and basically every comedy under the sun is going to tickle somebodys funny bone. If Nicole and Jecka from Class of 09 can defend Date Movie then Im sure theres somebody out there who will be grinning from ear to ear through this series and proudly holding it up as an example of their sense of humor. Or hell maybe its somebodys comfy show I mean aside from one pretty racist cameo from an Indian character its not an unpleasant or edgy series its actually rather wholesome. For me though I feel like it would be a lot more palatable if it were only 13 episodes long as the 26 epiode format does it no fucking favors. As for whether or not Id recommend it well the first DVD is pretty cheap on Ebay so if youre interested give that a watch and see if this brand of comedy resonates with you. Personally I just find it mostly disappointing. I give Best Student Council a 4/10.