Fall 2016 opened the floodgates to smorgasbord of anime shorts, from Chinese co-produced anime shorts to just a plethora of anime shorts, one of LA's more interested anime shorts was Bernard-jou Iwaku and by god did LA make a right pick with this one. You know that ONE person who wants to be in on the conversation but has utterly no material to start, so then that person starts talking about something else but using your conversation material as a jumping board...this is Sawako Machida. Really LA just summed up Bernard-jou Iwaku and that's not a bad thing AT ALL, simplistic and great in execution and reallyit has it's comical moments for a 5 minute anime short.

Bernard-jou Iwaku's strengths comes from Sawako Machida voiced by Eri Kitamura, as she really is the major catalyst in causing many of characters around her to be the reactant, mainly from Sawako's "lazy-yet genki" attitude. From wanting to talk to Endou voiced by Mitsuhiro Ichiki, Shiori Kanbayashi voiced by Mikako Komatsu who's a die-hard literary reader but snaps at Sawako's antics and finally Sumika Hasegawa voiced by Aya Suzaki, a love interest to Endou and she easily gets pulled into Sawako's antics. There is a slight bit of relationship upgrade mainly in the form of Sawako and Shiori for the most part, due to Shiori's tsundere tendencies causes her to open up to Sawako in some respects though Sawako's punchlines causes her to comedically lash back at her and really the comedy is GREAT because of the all the great punchlines Sawako inevitably creates and ends. LA might have added in Endou and Sumika in terms of "romantic" subplotline in this anime short, but it's only glossed over once or twice, but Sawako's social comedic antics with everyone else (especially Shiori) more or less takes center stage.

The animation is "ok" by Creators in Pack at best it's what you kinda expect from an anime short, the basic character designs to the comical chibi moments and add to it, tons of literary information on the background to the books they are quoting and referencing at the time, LA knows that "info on the background" isn't animation in a ways but still even the "info dumping" have some backgrounding and referencing movies from the books to them. The backgrounds themselves is usually in the library so LA can see why they added the "info dumping backgrounding"...ok LA is digging too deep into the backgrounds. Overall Bernard-jou Iwaku's animation isn't exactly something to honk about, especially for an anime short, but it's ok animation nonetheless.

The voice acting however is exceptional oddly enough and is one of the main reasons why LA continued watching it. Eri Kitamura is the MVP of Bernard-jou Iwaku, being the fast-talking snarky as all hell main character but LA will also add Mikako Komatsu as Shiori getting snapped by Sawako's antics and going into a fast-as-all-hell diatribes is great for comedic timing. Seriously the voice acting as much as it's fast-talking craziness, it's AMAZING fast-talking craziness...Eri Kitamura is AMAZING in Bernard-jou Iwaku.

If you want to see a snarky as hell character with literary refernces and ignoring social cues with a fast yet good relational and comedic chemistry from the rest of the cast then Bernard-jou Iwaku is a simplistic yet funny as hell easy pick for an anime short for Fall 2016...let's just hope Sawako might actually READ a book as much as WE pick good anime shorts for Fall 2016 because Bernard-jou Iwaku along with one other anime short got the distinction as LA's favourite anime short for Fall 2016.