EP. REVIEW: We Never Learn: BOKUBEN
Chaos Wings
Location: Your guess is as good as mine?!
Had a pretty decent start if a bit subdued but it seems fair to say that it'll be an enjoyable show throughout. What'll be interesting is seeing how the teacher character adds to the dynamic in the coming episodes.
Also the after credits scene in episode 2 is by far the funniest moment so far, talk about scatterbrained.
pharmboy23
Yeah, Uruka is far and away my favorite character and her incredible shyness around Nariyuki is a lot of fun. The manga has given a reasonable amount of depth to the characters for a story of this type and hopefully it comes across in the anime. The post credits is definitely the funniest moment so far, by a mile, but on the whole it's a cute enough show that I enjoy spending the time on it.
The whole poor tutor set-up does keep reminding me of Quintessential Quintuplets though.
Hypeathon
pharmboy23 wrote:
Just a quick aside, both titles were adapted from manga and We Never Learn was first serialized on Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump on February 7, 2017 whereas The Quintessential Quintuplets was first serialized on Kodansha's Weekly Shonen on August 9th, 2017. Though the latter announced it was getting an anime adaptation on August 8th 2018 while the former announced it was getting one on the 26th of that same month and year.
TheOtakuX
Location: Wooster, Ohio
I've been reading the manga since Viz started publishing it. Nice to see it animated.
Full disclosure - I read and enjoy both manga, although I find neither particularly hilarious.
ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
I've seen numerous comparisons between this and Nisekoi, which I frankly don't understand.
Nisekoi was stale, moldy bread compared to this.
Although not to say We Never Learn will be winning any awards in my book either. It's just managed to establish it's cast and it's strong points a lot better than Nisekoi did in it's introductory episodes. Plus the girls are already pretty delightful, especially Uruka.
IMO Quintuplets are still the superior harem in terms of currently ongoing series but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Treeborn
The series so far has been terribly predicable - it's so obvious how the scenes will play out, often times in sitting there for two minutes watching things unfold EXACTLY how it seemed it would. No I'm not bragging about my foresight or anything, I'm saying this show has felt like something straight out of a conveyor belt so far. The plot is like the flimsiest thing I've ever seen! If I hear the MC say super secret ultimate special VIP recommendation one more time I'm gonna lose it. I mean, what is that? That's like not even first draft! It's like nails on a chalkboard at this point to me...
Jock girl is cool though. Hope we see lots more of her.
Oh, the other best joke has to be Nariyuki's siblings in the first episode going on about how they found some edible plants to emphasize just how dirt poor the family is.
zenbud
Treeborn wrote:
We Never Learn is quite slow in the beginning but it already shows what it focus: more on the characters themselves be it with mini arcs, showing of the character and comedic situations. The romance is in second part, the series is definitely more about those things and their study or job situation with then comes.
Anyway, this post on reddit really describes the messages and what the manga does. Of course there's some spoilers but it's going to help your vision of the series and probably the anime as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/a4xfk0/we_never_learn_finding_strength_from_your_own/
I kind of liked the first episode, but I hope the writing improves soon because episode 2 felt stale and a little boring. Usually this kind of otaku comedies eventually become white noise to me, but it happens after 6 episodes. BOKUBEN is alarmingly close to that point.
ThatGuyWhoLikesThings wrote:
The first season of Nisekoi was decent, but season 2 was crappy.
Animegomaniac
That already sets her apart from the other girls, whose issues are presented as more inherent to their personalities.
That was just so insulting that it immediately sent me to see who wrote it. It's not a matter of personalities, it's a matter of intuitive thought processing. It's how two people can look at an orange and immediately come to different ways to express it, from its essential chemical components or how it looks and smells.
Yes, this process informs their personalities, how can it not. But it also forms Uruka's personality as well. She's just like the main character, someone who through hard work became very proficient in one area but somewhat useless in all others. So she sees everything through the lens of practice, swimming and physicality.
To put it in trope form, it's "When all you have is an hammer, everything is a nail". It's why Uruka's studying was improved when she added it to her swimming practice.
And everyone knows the funniest thing was the English vocab list, not the girl's grades on it but the list itself. Wait, that WASN'T intentional? Ok then Rizu's first "attempt" at a serious essay. But humor... as well as harem anime; They're not always in sync, I know... is subjective. Though it still shouldn't change the fact that Rizu is the best Girl. That is some objective Truth right there...
"The one who has known him for outside the length of the show, let's say The Longest, is the first one to feelings for him"... yeah, it would be weird if it was one of the other girls first... and shouldn't it be obvious he doesn't reciprocate those feelings? This is going to be quite the series of reviews to read.
njprogfan
Collector Extraordinaire
Location: A River Named Toms
Studying Harem - the new anime category that will be milked like a blue-ribbon heifer
Marimo0
Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 7:49 am
I find it kind of concerning with some of the changes in adaption. When Yuiga and Ogata were at her restaurant, she kept getting confused at understanding what the question was asking for. So Yuiga gave Ogata some advice, which we learn in a flashback during the exam, on ways of cutting out the filler to essay questions to get the main point. Stuff like cutting out when the author repeats a statement with phrases like "in other words" or how words like "however" are an important point. So in the anime, we don't get the parts where we see Yuiga's tutoring actually paying off, we just get the part where he believes in her and the part where it was only partially due to luck she got an average grade in her exam.
They also removed a flashback of Yuiga helping to explain Furuhashi what the symbols meant in equations. She at least vaguely mentions the main point of the lesson, how equations are created by humans so they also have their own logic and reasoning, but it loses some impact without the actual scene showing how Yuiga taught her.
Also weird change, in Uruka's segment, they met Yuiga in the store while Uruka was trying on her new outfit (his family's so poor he has to make their clothes and he came to the store for design ideas), and her friends get the idea to pay for her clothes, take her uniform, and leave her with Yuiga to get a textbook. But in the anime, they just tell her to go hit on Yuiga in her new uniform while paying for it and taking her uniform without ever seeing him, so they can't even guarantee that Uruka would spend time with him or even run into him like they did in the manga's story. I'm not sure why that change happened since I don't think it even helped to save some runtime, though I don't think it really hurt that segment as much as the other previously two noted segments and their cuts.
Episode 3: Where we learn the science girl is a poor girl from a poor family and the language arts girl is a rich girl... lacking in common sense and can't get the hang of locking doors, the poor thing. Like, AT ALL.
Also, Rizu looked fabulous in her uniform but I'm not biased at all [rereads previous post] No, no, it still holds as Yuiga himself noticed the girl was totally the hottest thing in the restaurant. And then there were two non Rizu segments but they weren't as interesting to me.
Fine, I'm mostly not biased. Still, nobody should look that good in that uniform. I'm not even... that much of.... a fan of kimonos, it's got to be the cap. Ah, it's because red is her motif which is absolutely dominated by the school uniform which is why when she is covered totally in her opposite, solid blue, she comes off as totally changed. Fumino, being the softer personality wise, have the colors of a washed out blue, and in this episode, pink pajamas.
Man, they are really playing out this red/blue demon thing to its full extent, aren't they?
Animegomaniac wrote:
Episode 3: Where we learn the science girl is a poor girl from a poor family
Ogata's not poor, she just helps out with her family's Udon shop.
cloudflare ray# 4f7deae8d268c17a-IAD