I’m not the biggest anime fan. In fact, I’ve only really started watching any at all this last year. Most of it seems to be either A: Fight Fight Fight Giant Mecha Big Gun Fight, or B: Panty Shot Male Gaze Panty Shot Boobs Fight Male Gaze Short Skirt
Not so great.
But there a few that are really… fun, even if they’re not the greatest thing ever (I’m told there’s great art, too [Revolutionary Girl Utena], but I haven’t seen any yet).
Strawberry Panic! – the ‘!’ is actually part of the title – is one of the fun ones.
Instant summary: There’s bunch of (mostly) rich girls at a (mostly) rich girls’ boarding school. Most are lesbian to one degree or another, hilarity ensues. There’s a dead girlfriend and various love triangles involved.
Let’s get one thing straight: Strawberry Panic! not great art. It’s not even average art, or average pop culture, for that matter. It’s crap. But it’s crap of the very highest caliber. It’s melodrama out the nose, over-the-top plotting, full of romantic comedy cliches (the finale ends with a ’stop the wedding, I really love her‘ moment). There’s random fan service, implausible soap-opera style injuries (instant temporary complete memory loss!) and to make things worse, the writers take their drama way too seriously, and don’t even try to make it campy.
But somehow it works. There’s embarrassingly unintentional humor, for one thing. For example, in the second or so scene of the first episode, the protagonist – Nagisa – gets lost on her way to school and randomly meets the Don Juan-type (Shizuma) under a tree. Shizuma, being a total playa (and y’know, love at first sight) kisses Nagisa on the forehead, who… wait for it… faints. Out cold. For the rest of the afternoon. I burst out laughing at this scene, but it’s played (well, animated) perfectly straight (so to speak). There’s dramatic music and a fade to white. No ‘wink’ at the audience, nothing. Weird, but funny.
But it gets better – the completely bizarre moments are dispensed with eventually. The fan service isn’t so pervasive that it gets into male gaze territory. The characters are quite believable in their melodramatic sort of way.
And the music’s nice, too.
In the end, it’s a very fluffy, sticky sweet romantic comedy with a happy ending, played for all it’s worth. And somehow, it’s all quite strangely compelling.