Seitokai Yakuindomo the Movie is, for better or worse, just what you would expect from an SYD movie. Sex jokes, sex jokes, jokes about Hagimura’s height, and more sex jokes are the be all, end all, and the punchlines are just as outlandish and hilarious as they’ve always been. Even by this point in the series with you knowing exactly how the structure of each gag works, they still manage to send it in a direction you weren’t expecting a good 80-90% of the time. That said, there is the matter of whether SYD’s core premise is compatible with the movie format. With a fewbrief exceptions, there is no continuous narrative other than the steady progression through this chunk of their time at school; just gag after gag after gag, and when you extend that past the length of a standard TV episode, you do start to feel that run time weigh on you.
It does manage to get that coveted movie-quality upgrade, but with perhaps one of the most bizarre monkey’s paws to grace the modern anime industry. The character designs are significantly more crisp and detailed, letting the simple beauty of their base models shine through nicely, but it also appears that even SYD cannot escape the curse of post-Hand Shakers GoHands productions. Though it only takes up a few minutes of screentime overall, the opening tracking shots filled with horrid CG builds, garish color design, and stuttery frame rates check off all the hallmarks of the jarring GoHands obscenity to a T, rather than the jarring obscenity that makes SYD so fun and quirky. I wouldn’t quite mark this down as GoHands claiming another victim, but it is sad to see their dirty work taint an otherwise nicely polished and still maddeningly humorous franchise that I adore.