Review of AHO-GIRL

I’m sure everyone has had one friend from their past that always seemed to come off as overbearing, always being a bit too loud and seemingly always trying to get somebody, or at the very least your, attention Now imagine if that friend somehow replicated and became every single person in your life. That scenario is what our protagonist of Aho Girl has seemingly found himself in, where in a world of screwballs he is forever cursed to serve as the lone source of sanity. While most people tend to focus on Yoshiko, the titular Aho Girl who is stuck on an idiotic neverending quest toconsume all bananas, I was instead mostly fascinated by the show’s other protagonist, Akuru whose neverending quest is to make sure Yoshiko doesn’t consume his banana. Because in this show’s world of idiots, perverts, and mature perverts he is forced to serve as the sole straight man to the insanity around him. Time and time again we see him pushed to his limits and weirdly out of the cast he was the sole reason that I stuck around and finished this admittedly irritating series.

At its core, Aho Girl is a rapid-fire sketch comedy anime that quickly bounces from setup to setup trying its best to cram as many jokes and references into its 12-minute episode structure. With only 12-minutes the creators of Aho Girl decided to focus on the jokes and elected to leave out excessive aspects like character development, world-building, relationships, and frankly any semblance of an actual plot. However, despite lacking any actual plot besides Yoshiko being dumb and wanting bananas, often at the expense of the serious and grounded Akurur, Aho Girl actually kept my attention, especially during the first few episodes.

At the start of the series, the setups and gags just focused on the dynamic between Yoshiko and Akuru, and while Yoshiko is undeniably annoying it always felt weirdly compelling to see time and time again Akuru having to endure and eventually give in to his own rage. With further episodes adding to Akuru’s misery as more and more side characters began to inhabit the show with each one posing some weird trait or obsession to clash with his serious demeanor and further provide horrifying evidence that Yoshiko isn’t the annoying outlier of his world, but rather he is the sane outlier of a world of aggravating madness. From the lewd tsundere class president, Yoshiko’s mom whose desperate to marry off her daughter, to his own younger sister who has seemingly contracted the same strain of stupidity that has afflicted Yoshiko. No matter where he goes this world is Akuru’s own personal hell and if find it oddly amusing to watch his comedic suffering.

Unfortunately, while that concept certainly grabbed my attention and kept me laughing for the first few episodes the show eventually reached a point where the series’ premise and humor started to lose me. Instead of branching out and experimenting with its gags and setups Aho Girl quickly began to recycle its own material falling into a series of extremely formulaic gags, made even worse by the series' gradual refocusing from Akuru’s suffering to the daily life of Yoshiko, which I didn’t find nearly as interesting.

Aho Girl is definitely worth a view, especially if you’re like me and were looking for a comedic itch to briefly fill the hole of Gintama. Though it definitely lacks the staying power of a truly good comedy series and is probably best viewed by watching highlight clips of its best scenes on Youtube.