Review of My Girlfriend is Shobitch

The 4-koma. A simple yet pure comedic style that has recently been sullied due to the sheer amount of attempts to stretch the original source material into a full-length series. While yes, it can work sometimes, this is certainly one example in which having full episodes turns the experience into something that's long and hard to watch. Yes that was intentional. Story: Sho-bitch, as my shorthand for this series will be, centers (quite literally) itself around our main protagonist, Shinozaki Haruka. One day he confesses to the school beauty, Kousaka Akiho, and instead of getting a straight answer from her, isasked what position he prefers. Yep, it's that kind of series.

For 10 episodes, Sho-bitch runs the gag of 'perverted innuendo comedy' into the ground ranging from attempted subtlety, to no subtlety, to just outright violating your mind with images of the sexual nature as its cast of hormone-filled teenagers bombard the screen with everything from imagery, to twisting words towards their own sexual fantasies, all with questionable motives when you step back and look at this from a 'non-comedic standpoint'. The show pretty much only does one thing, and that one thing persists throughout the entire series thrusting its way into your memory so that you've submitted your fate to it and just go along with the flow anyway.

In essence, the style is based around a 2 man comedy team where our main protagonist is the only straight man (and Kousaka's father, I guess) and everyone from his girlfriend to his childhood friend, and everyone in between reveals their sexual fantasy for any given situation so that everything becomes awkward for the MC, and you laugh. Or supposed to. While indeed comedy is subjective, Sho-bitch's presentation and execution for jokes is the same for the show's entire 10 episode runtime. The result of this creates a stale presentation that goes from being mildly funny to kind of annoying. But again, even that's on the individual, so, at your own risk.

While Sho-bitch attempts to be a sweet and genuine romcom as the main couple of the series gradually gets used to dating to the point that they get to the 'I love you' phase (clearly the penultimate stage in any relationship) as the episodes run by, the sincerity of those words get vastly overshadowed by the show's naturally filthy nature and attempts to be funny from that normally filthy nature. Perverted comedy is nothing new in anime (as Seitokai Yakuindomo will attest to that), but the lack of flair and the show's crudeness become its downfall because each episode makes the viewer more and more blasé from seeing the same thing over and over again, making the viewing experience lackluster as a result.

Overview:
+/- Genuine relationship? (Cause there is technically progression.)
+/- Just all perverted comedy
- Pretty much one long running joke (It would be a 'on you, aka +/-', but in this case it hurts more than helps)

Characters:

To solidify the show as a series devoted to innuendos (which really aren't innuendos by the end of it), the characters for the most part exemplify a specific...theme to add some 'variety' to the cast and make the joke 'varied', even if that doesn't help much since the presentation is all the same.

Now Shinozaki Haruka is the series's straight man. No question about it, and he is honestly not that interesting. His personality stems from him acting as the series's straight man and preventing whatever is happening now from going any further because if this cast was let loose into the world without any control, we would have a massive case of sexual assault on our hands. Regardless, aside from that, he tries to be a good boyfriend and learns to try and be one for his new girlfriend despite her insinuating many a perverted thing because...I guess she's thirsty or something. She's not really, but I guess we're supposed to get that impression. All this leaves his personality to be stagnant because rather than really develop his character and give him more traits, he's stuck being the boring babysitter for the rest of the cast.

And...now for the rest of the cast. To be honest, pretty much everyone else worth mentioning in this series falls into the category of 'specializing' in a particular style of perverted joke. So here's them in a lightning round:

Kousaka Akiho: All-rounder. Makes any kind of jokes but shows some genuineness from trying to be a good girlfriend.
Ariyama Shizuku: Childhood friend that likes making jokes but can't take any herself. May or may not have a crush on the MC (not confirmed) and has a bust complex.
Shinozaki Kanata: Imouto who always wears something cat-like and insinuates stuff, but doesn't actually know the meaning half the time.
Saijou Rina: Oujosama-like girl who is basically a sexual predator for girls.
Hoshikawa Seiya: Comes in very late, but makes a splash due to an omnipresent 'yaoi hand' and appreciation for shafts in his hole.

I could go on and on, but this should give a rough estimate as to what we're dealing with her. Characters with smaller appearances do follow this trend, so that isn't the end of what Sho-bitch has to offer. Does this make the cast interesting? Well, kind of. Again, while the presentation is the same, the content at lest differs from person to person. Is this a good thing? Well...no. They're all super one-note as far as I'm aware.

Overview:
+/- Variety?
- One-note cast across the board.

Art:

Produced by a collaboration of Diomedia and Studio Blanc, Shobitch is...not very pleasing to look at. Aside from the violating amount of imagery (and clothing choices) from your everyday dick joke to pantsu and everything being covered in white liquid which in and itself can turn away a large part of the show's potential audience, the one thing the art lacks is consistency.

Very often character frames from one scene to another, even key frames from ones side by side to each other don't look right. Proportions and things like placement of the eyes, size of the head, etc all beg the kind of quality control that came about during production, and as such, create a very unappealing piece to look at. Colors are also quite blinding and don't have any variety or contrast to it having this very saturated color scheme persisting throughout the show's runtime. I know Studio Blanc doesn't exactly have many anime under its belt, but Diomedia at least has a half-decent team working under it so that this shouldn't be THAT much of a problem.

Overview:
+/- Lots and lots of perverted imagery
- Vastly inconsistent art

Sound:

'Eien Labyrinth' sung by Aoi Yuuki herself poses a weirdly high standard for the show's soundtrack. Her performance contrasts her role as Kousaka who ordinarily has a lower tone to her voice to compliment her 'kuudere-like' appearance by showing off her higher range. Oh, and the song's pretty good. Personally, I wouldn't say it's anything worth listening to again, as it doesn't have that 'memorability' factor that I tend to look for in a show's OST, but it's by no means a bad track.

In contrast, the show's ED, "Koi no Himitsu" by pua:re (who's basically a group of a bunch of the show's female seiyuus singing together), bears a more energetic tone that similar to its OP counterpart, is not terrible to listen to, but not that memorable all things considered. I suppose the show's budget all went to the music rather than the art. So I guess...that's a thing.

Overview:
+ Decent tracks

Personal Enjoyment:

As someone who read the original manga, this show at least from a visual standpoint...disappointed me. Story-wise, it's about what I expected. Since it was based on a 4-koma series, I didn't really expect it to be anything spectacular. But each episode still gave me that sinking feeling of realizing "Oh we're doing this now" as scenes that I uncomfortably recalled from the source material were being replicated in the anime. If the quality of the art had been up to what Diomedia's standards for art usually are, then I would've given this show the pass of meeting expectations so it's not great, but not terrible. But since the lack of consistency made the visual experience lackluster, I unfortunately have to dock it a couple points for that reason. I have this joke theory that getting Aoi Yuuki to voice the female protagonist and do a song for the show took so much out of the budget that they had nothing left for barely anything due to her popularity. I'd be amusing to think if that's the reason why the show's quality is below average.

Did I like this series?

Sho-bitch for me is kind of obligatory at this point. It's not one of those series I look forward to, but when it's there I kinda just go "Oh, its this one again." So it doesn't really elicit a response. I will say that out of the entire cast, Kanata is my favorite of the bunch. Personally, I just find her cute and vaguely amused that everything she wears on her head has to have cat ears. Because why not.

What didn't I like about this series?

I'd be remised to say that the comedy definitely got uncomfortable at times, but I was more annoyed by the lack of art consistency more than anything. Sure the original art isn't great, but when you make Kousaka's eyes go even more further apart than they already are, then there's a problem.

Would I recommend this series?

Even if you're a fan of perverted comedy...watch at your own risk. The show itself adheres to the lowest common denominator, and it's pretty self-aware about it. Despite that though, it's not really something that's worth putting on your list because the time could be used for other things. Personally, I would've cut the runtime of each episode in half so that the series is presented more as a short since for snappy situational comedy, that format tends to do better for this kind of show. All in all, Shobitch is a below average school romcom perverted comedy that has been done better so unless you're really interested in what these 10 episodes have inside them, I would best stay away from it.