Kujibiki Unbalance has a typical set up - hard luck guy Chihiro and perky tomboy Tokino are childhood friends who’ve just entered the prestigious Rikkyouin Academy. On the first day of school, all students are required to draw lottery tickets (kujibiki) – and Chihiro and Tokino find that they’ve won the job of President and Vice-President of next year’s student council! Along with Secretary and Treasurer-to-be (the crabby, undersized mad scientist Renko, and shy grade-schooler Kyoyi, respectively) next year’s student council must fulfill increasingly outlandish tasks by the order of the current student council (under the command of the mysterious and icily beautiful half-German/half-Japanese Ritsuko Kubel Kitterand)….and if Chihiro, Tokino, Rendo, and Kyoki fail at even one, they may find themselves expelled!
Although appealing in its own way, with occasional flashes of screwball humor, KU remains a very average series; ironically so, because it was meant to be a parody of/homage to contemporary anime trends. KU is actually a spin-off of Genshikan (a “slice of life” manga/anime about a college anime club) and KU was the “series within a series” that the members of the club watched obsessively - so it’s “averageness” seems like a clever design element. That’s not to say that there aren’t uniquely…disturbing elements to the series; despite the fact it’s played for laughs, even for a seasoned fan like myself found the incestuous attachment Chihiro’s older sister has for him to be more than little unsettling.
Visually, it’s definitely moe, resembling Ken Akamatsu’s Negima to a great degree (presumably intentional) and its theme – romantic situations resulting from childhood promises, madcap humor and bizarre plot turns – are typical of Akamatsu’s work as well.
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Just as KU is heavily influenced by Negima and Love Hina, Doki Doki School Hours draws a perceivable influence from Azumanga Diaoh – even sharing origins as a 4-panal manga. Like AD, it centers around the daily interactions of an eccentric high school teacher (the baby-faced and somewhat immature Mika Suzuki, aka “Mika-sensei) and her equally eccentric students – the sarcastic Tominaga, ditzy Kobeyashi, goody-two shoes Iinchou (the girls); and dumb jock Suetake, prettyboy narcissist Seki, nerdy otaku Watabe, and stoic Nakamura (the boys).
Pretty standard stuff, but what I found extremely unique about this series was the inclusion of two clearly homosexual characters into the class: the lesbian Kitagawa and male homosexual Kudo. Neither character is treated as being anything other than normal, and aside from their occasional inappropriate methods of expressing their desires (Kudo’s romantic fantasies of dumb jock Suetake result in constant nosebleeds, and Kitagawa can’t keep her hands off Mika-sensei), neither character is treated as anything outside of the norm. Even at this point it’s still relatively uncommon to see an openly gay character on conservative American TV, so seeing openly gay teens in an anime is surprising - and refreshing.
Another interesting element of DDSH is the fact that Mika-sensei is a “parasite single”, an unmarried adult living at home with her parents even though she’s in her late 20s – an increasingly common situation in modern Japan. Despite the protests of her snarky mother, Mika-sensei’s soft-hearted dad continues to spoil her by feeding, clothing, and even driving the pathetic Mika-sensei to work in his car. Although with the homosexual characters, this plot element helps to ground the series in day-to-day reality; in fact, I wish more anime and manga were willing to incorporate elements of the “everyday” rather than rely so heavily on their trademarked escapism.
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