Review of AHO-GIRL

Comedy comes in many forms, from witty satire to slapstick, sitcom and more. Some of these subgenres produce shows which you can enjoy proudly or openly without fear of judgement. Aho Girl is not one of those shows. In fact, it might be the dumbest and most immature anime I’ve seen since Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan, which is saying a lot. That probably sounds like a bad thing, but I found this show hilarious. As the title suggests, the show is about a girl, Yoshiko, who’s somewhat of a moron, frequently scoring 0s on tests and being pretty much incapable of functioning like a normal humanbeing. But what what she lacks in conventional intelligence, she more than makes up for with her boundless energy and enthusiasm and her absurd, yet often profound reasoning that frequently criticises and questions the nature of accepted social norms, albeit completely unintentionally on her part. This is a girl who I might describe as being a cross between Mako Mankanshoku and Karl Pilkington, and the chaos she creates is a thing of beauty to behold.

The ‘other’ main character is Akutsu, the unwitting and unfortunate object of Yoshiko’s affection, who is otherwise an intelligent, if socially inept high school student. If you’ve ever seen The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, you’ll be familiar with the dynamic between him and Yoshiko, as it’s in many ways similar to Kyon and Haruhi, and it’s a formula that I feel works very well. There’s also a fair number of supporting characters whose interactions with Yoshiko and Akutsu fuel some of the funnier gags throughout the show.

Being an adaptation of a 4-koma manga, Aho Girl is very much a gag comedy, featuring a sequence of shorter sketches over the course of each 12-minute episode with only minimal continuity between them. Some of these sketches have their own, unique style independent from the rest of the show, particularly when parodying another show, something Aho Girl does a number of times to great effect.

Whether or not you enjoy Aho Girl likely depends on whether you like absurd, over-the-top slapstick humour. As a fan of that, I think this is great. If I had any criticisms, it’d be that while many of the gags are hilarious, some of them got a bit repetitive or weren’t that great to begin with, but overall I’d say this is very much worth the watch.