Sometimes a show’s title is a clever nod to a hidden gem inside. Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! (Seitokai ni mo Ana wa Aru!) by Studio Passione is not that kind of show. Instead, it’s entirely too on the nose. Director Naoyuki Tatsuwa has taken the gag-comedy manga by Muchimaro and turned it into 24 minutes of complete and utter nonsense.
Ume Mizunoe (Shôgo Sakata) is a gifted student when it comes to Japanese and literature, but his science grades are suffering horribly. His homeroom teacher, Satomi Hiratsuka (Yumi Uchiyama), desperate not to have to do extra work holding him back, instead sends him to join the Student Council as a way to earn extra credit.
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Mizunoe is the main character and is also the most unlikeable person in Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1. Yes, he’s brilliant in a few subjects, but he’s also incredibly arrogant and waxes poetic whenever he can. As asinine as the whole experience is, Mizunoe makes it exhausting, too.
Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1 mistakes humor for narrative.
After setting up its premise, Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1 devolves into a 24-minute gag-reel of innuendo. As Mizunoe meets each person on the Student Council, everyone is given a chance to deliver at least one perverted joke, or get too close to Mizunoe for comfort. Even the Student Body President, Hisako Kotobuki (Haruka Shiraishi) has a moment of intense arousal and inner dialogue identifying herself as a closet perv.
The likeliest reason for this format is that the original manga is a 4-koma (or panel) gag. It’s not intended to be consumed as some overarching story about a boy trying to graduate. The biggest challenge Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1 has is this format. Unlike American adaptations, manga is often treated as sacred when it’s adapted into anime.
An American television show might look at short comedic comics and turn it into a whole story. For example, when Jim Davis’ Garfield comic strips were turned into the cartoon Garfield & Friends, it had full episodes telling stories based on the newspaper comic strip instead of merely telling the exact story. Anime, by and large, adapts manga as it is instead of as it could be.
This actually brings up another issue, though. Because Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is such a short format for individual stories being told, the first episode adapted multiple chapters. There are still 11 more episodes to come, and likely every episode will have the same multi-chapter approach.
Then there’s the humor. With Even the Student Council Has Its Holes!, It’s like a sketch comedy using the harem genre to depict a boy surrounded by females and attempting to be funny. Unfortunately, not all the jokes land. The one genuinely funny joke is wrapped up in a broader, unfunny joke that uses a character’s sexual orientation and gender fluidity as the punchline.
Tan Otori (Hiyori Kono) initially is entirely too close to Mizunoe, making him more and more uncomfortable about the inappropriate behavior by one of the school’s girls. That is, until the Student Body Treasurer, Arisu Terui (Shizuka Ishigami), kicks Otori in the groin, dropping him to the ground.
She explains that Tan Otori is actually a boy who likes to “hit on boys sometimes.” The joke falls flat as it reduces Otori’s sexual preference and gender presentation to nothing more than a joke. When Mizunoe clarifies, asking if Otori is a boy, Terui’s response is a hilarious break of the fourth wall.
Studio Passione’s Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is just plain bad.
The problem is that it’s got the dressing of a fairly dehumanizing joke ridiculing his identity. Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1 had the opportunity to respectfully showcase a person is different from the rest of the characters and instead chose a less inclusive path.
There is no narrative to speak of. Once the premise is set up, any kind of story being told is a flimsy vehicle to the next piece of innuendo in Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1. Somehow the series confuses jokes with story beats, and the result is chaos, nonsense, and not much else.
Aside from a few chuckles and one well-timed, though ill-inspired, joke, Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! Episode 1 is simply not a good show. It lacks anything worthwhile to say. Any real message the episode could have had is replaced by raunchy innuendo and harmful stereotypes. It could have been funny and insightful, but instead, Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is 24 minutes better spent doing anything else.
Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is streaming now on OceanVeil with new episodes airing Saturdays.
