Minami-ke is a great comedy

Spot the trap.

I honestly didn’t expect much out of Minami-ke when I fired up episode 1. I figured I’d like it, but I didn’t figure it’d smack me in the face with an absolutely bizarre and brilliant sense of humor. It rises up out of the “schoolgirl comedy” subgenre by being completely absurd. The best part of episode 2 had to have been the running televised loincloth competition joke. I mean, it made so little sense that I thought the series was never going to be able to top it. But then…

SENSEI!

NINOMIYA-KUN!

*screeeeeeech*

and the show skyrocketed into totally hilarious territory.

Granted, the random TV bits are the best example for why I respect the comic ability of this series. The series as a whole strikes me as just plain absurd. Nothing in the series makes any kind of literal sense. Kana and Chiaki somehow turning a love confession letter into a letter of challenge was a stroke of genius. Later episodes, such as Haruka’s classmate having bizarre fantasies of her as a mother (with her two children being Kana and Chiaki) just plain out had me in stitches. Not bad for a show I thought would just be another mildly amusing schoolgirl comedy.

The series does tend somewhat to the more sexual-innuendo laced kind of jokes somewhat a bit too often, which isn’t really a problem, but it feels kind of jarring, given the rest of the show. It almost feels tacked on, since the author of the manga is the same guy who did Today in Class 5-2 seemingly can’t do a series without lacing it with sexual innuendo. Sometimes, however, the tendency towards the ero-ero makes for pure and definitely not ero-ero hilarity. Which is always a good thing.

And the last episode I watched (6) did something I never thought possible–I actually found a guy dressed as a girl kind of cute. I assume it’s just because I’m weak vs. hairclips and failed my saving throw. There’s no other explanation. Now there’s talent.