KABUKIBU!

DESCRIPTION

CAST

SPECIAL ComedyKabukibu!: Oogiri - Chiyokoreito Kassen

REVIEWS

• 

  riiiibu

  58/100
  An introduction to kabuki that is less boring than reading the wikipedia page.

  Should you watch Kabukibu! if you want to watch a good school club anime? No.
  There are many anime that do this in a masterful way, this one is not it. It tries to add both comedy and drama but ends up missing the mark on either. What it does do well, however, is the educational aspect. So…

  Should you watch Kabukibu! if you want a basic introduction to what kabuki is, but want to be entertained at the same time instead of reading up on it? Yes.

  I started watching Kabukibu! for exactly that reason. And the show does handle the educational aspect well. Watching the show, you learn a little bit about the 400-year history of kabuki, but it’s not being rammed down your throat in one go. The main character, Kurusu Kurugo, is very knowledgeable and will slip in a nugget here and there about the beginning of kabuki, some of its history, what the performances consist of, and so on. The show doesn’t go too deep; I think most of the things you learn while watching can also be found on a quick internet search, but seeing it played out makes it a bit more memorable through visualisation.

  Kabukibu! can be funny at times, but mostly it seems a bit forced. There were also one or two moments where I (with my limited knowledge of Japanese) was able to pick up on a joke that was completely lost in translation. Of all the characters being played for laughs (the “fat” otaku Maru, the “feminine” dancer Hanamichi and Kaoru-senpai with her own fanclub existing of nearly every girl in the school) Akutsu is the one that works best comedically. He has an interesting backstory that backs up his personality as the overly confident “I’m a star!” tough guy with the soft heart and his funny moments don’t feel too forced.

  Now, what bothered me most about this show and why I can’t give it a higher score, is the character development throughout the show. It’s so slow that when the show ended, it felt like it had only just started. It made me so sad because they have a cast of characters with such great potential. We’re fed these tiny details about the character’s backstories, like Tonbo, who was shown to have been bullied in school until Kurugo moved in next door after which they became best friends, but it’s not explored further. And there’s this great interaction between Tonbo and Kaoru that is never mentioned later in the show. Giving the characters more time to breathe and develop would have made this show instantly more enjoyable.

  The two most interesting characters in my opinion, are Shin (Akutsu) and Jin (Ebihara). Both come from a kabuki background: Shin was taught kabuki by his mother but has sworn to hate it since his mother left for America, Jin has been training to be a performer since he was three years old and belongs to a long line of kabuki performers. They are complete opposites in every way and I think that the conflict between these two could have sparked really interesting character growth. But progress was always halted on Jin’s part and it left me feeling really unsatisfied at the end of the show.

  Even though I gave this anime a fairly low score, I am hoping we get to see another season. I think the ending of this first season would be a great starting-off point for an infinitely better sequel!

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• 

  Kalladry

  78/100
  An entertaining show that zeroes in on its hyper-specific subject & context, & thus provides a full, enjoyable story

  _Kurogo Kurusu is a high school student with an almost annoying love of kabuki, the traditional Japanese dance-drama. The only problem for him is that his school doesn’t have a club for it. He decides to take matters into his own hands and create a kabuki club._

  First things first: the title is fun to say. Try it. “KABUKIBU.” It means “kabuki club,” but it sounds, to my ears, like it’s meant to continue going. Kabukibukibukibuki...

  The premise is basic: excitable 10th grader loves kabuki, sets out to create a club with his more stoic-seeming but loyal best friend. They meet and convince a number of students to join, including ones with backstories like “classically-trained in Japanese dancing,” and proceed to put on some small performances.

  It’s 12 episodes, and there’s really not a ton of drama. The stakes here are pretty low: teen wants a club, needs people, gets people. People who mostly don’t know much about kabuki, and must be converted either emotionally (to see kabuki as interesting and the club as a worthwhile activity) or just artistically (to be able to put on decent kabuki performances). Interestingly, Kurogo himself could be included in the latter group, because it turns out that just a love of kabuki, and having watched a lot of it, does not automatically a kabuki actor make.

  Incidentally, I didn’t know much about kabuki, either. The show does a pretty good job explaining it. There’s no English-language equivalent I can think of, but if you can sorta imagine Shakespeare in the original, most hard-to-understand language, spoken by people with adolescent voice cracking, with costumes inspired by mimes, you might get close. (This is not a criticism, it’s just very different than anything I’ve ever seen.)

  The story is driven by small things: will they find enough members? Will they have enough time to learn their parts before their first performance? Will that one classmate stop being such an elitist asshole long enough for something nice to happen?

  And because the scope is kept small, it works well. No worries about going to a large competition, this is just a really enthusiastic teenager who wants to have a school-sanctioned reason to learn about and perform kabuki with other people for the next 3 years. That’s it.

  

  It was just plain enjoyable.

  Verdict

  English dub? No

  Visuals: Nice, often bright. Character designs are distinct, and the highlights are always when they’re in costume. Japanese writing in the background is subtitled extremely well in my opinion, as seen in one of the screencaps above, making it easy for me to read. It’s more realistic, though, so no designs are super memorable (despite designs being famously done by CLAMP).

  Worth watching? Yes! It’s a great, low-stakes show that explains things pretty well. No stress, not weird stuff going on to cause plotholes.

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