Review of Plastic Neesan

Clocking in at just over twenty minutes, Plastic Neesan is a girl’s club gag comedy that seemingly never deviates from what it at least tried to accomplish. Given the run-time, it’s a bit of a no-brainer that its standing as a collection of two minute shorts would be unable to encompass the necessities found within the usual makeup of a narrative. Although shorter stories may try to deliver a profound message, Plastic Neesan is different in this regard solely due to its comedic appeal. Got some time to kill? If so, this may or may not be for you. Centering around three girls’ plastic modeling club,its facade of the usual club matters wouldn’t last long, as Neesan’s desire to be drawn like a French girl makes way for the other events that take place in a rapid-fire succession. It wouldn’t take long to find out that it’s a club where anything goes really, with the only coherence consistent within this anime’s plot are the girls’ friendship, who seem to put up with each other’s stupidity just fine. Essentially, its routine use of of gag-humor similarly leaves the viewer with a feign idea of randomness, despite the fact it could come off as rather consistent. Plastic Neesan’s humor could be plotted on a spectrum between childish slapstick humor, mediocre fan-service, or the occasional outlier that finds its way in-between the two. Although there’s not much to gague besides that, its comedy is typical for a run-of-the-mill gag comedy at a school, with none of the jokes really landing. Leagues below other gag comedies, it seems to pay homage to Cromartie Highschool by incorporating a gorilla into its story. As a matter of fact, plastic models have little relevance, as we’d come to see that they simply do what models to best, perch upon a scalp.

The characters are all one-dimensional, and more-so exist as comedic set pieces. Well, at least they’re not zero-dimensional background characters, because there’s nothing that encompasses the personality of a background character. Neesan as the main character (if one could call her that) is a strange one due to her personality being more in line with a side-gag character. Indeed, this is a gag comedy anime, but her friends both represent the “less silly” side to their friendship; typically, this phenomenon is reversed, at least in regards to Cromartie Highschool. When fed up with Neesan, her friend Okappa has the occasional burst of anger, which helps insert the high-quality level of animation in use for when she physically assaults her. Sporting a tank on her head, Makimaki is basically the “level-headed” one of the bunch, which is a kinder way of saying she doesn’t have much of a personality for a short which fulfills one purpose, and that is its gags. In addition, Okappa and Makimaki go through with a minor personality change when the comedy needs them to. All in all, they're not much of note.

The artstyle is the typical moe shtick expected from comedy anime taking place at a school. Although the jokes don’t often land, the slapstick helps it become more expressive, because although it utterly fails at being funny, it gives the series of shorts at least some character. Plastic Neesan is cute at times, and she seems to be indestructible when going up against Okappa’s anger. Again, the animation is quite good and the rest of the short’s contents don’t really do it any justice, it’s fluid and uses a lot of unusual animation techniques to give it the illusion of high speed. Oh, and the five second title card animation was pretty good to, surpassing most other aspects of the art.

What else is there? Not much really, this anime is unremarkable for the most part, and definitely not as funny as some would make it out to be. The title, for one, is almost misleading and more-so exists to set its comedic situations up. Besides that, the animation stands out when compared to the very structure of this short, which is surprising when good animation mostly a supporting element. Despite being just over twenty minutes, it rarely justifies its runtime at all.

Cromartie Highschool is miles better, and definitively went beyond an expressionless viewing experience. (Please) go watch that instead.