Tooru is having a difficult time. Being small for her age and lacking in social skills, she only really has one friend, a bubbly space cadet named Run who she’s known since they were children. Run is a year older than her, and as such, she got into high school one year prior... But now Tooru has freshly graduated from middle school, becoming a first year at Run’s high school, only to find out that Run is much more popular than she expected, already having two close female friends, and even worse, being infuriatingly popular with the boys. Her old friend is now just out of her reach, but Tooru will dutifully rise to the challenge, pushing past her limits to befriend Run’s friends(the intellectually mature Nagi and the anatomically mature Yuuko) and defend her from the advances of her male classmates, all while coming to terms with her own complex feelings towards this wide-eyed social butterfly. Thus begins the every day lives of Tooru and the quirky upper-classman friend group that Run has recruited her into, and yeah, that’s basically it.

I was surprised when I was preparing to write my Worlds’ End Harem review, because not only had Studio Gokumi produced an anime that I’d reviewed previously... The slightly underrated Nakaimo... But they had also cut their teeth on A Channel, an anime that I was planning to review in the near future. Well, that future is now, and for Gokumi’s first serious animation project after splitting off from Studio Gonzo, 2011’s A Channel was a damn impressive debut effort. Being yet another slice of life anime starring a cast of cute girls just doing stuff, and based on another one of those infamous four-panel comedy mangas, Gokumi had every excuse in the world to rest on their laurels and put this show out for yennies on the dollar, because material like this never really needs a high budget to be successful, but damned if anybody told THEM that.

To be clear, I’m not saying there aren’t ANY high budget anime of this particular sub-genre, but A Channel has to be one of the most expensive looking slice of life anime I’ve seen, to the point that it often feels like it’s just showing off. The actual character animation is always on point, with graceful movements and highly expressive facial expressions, but to make matters even more impressive, a ton of extra effort went into smaller moments, like how background extras don’t always freeze, and all of the little extra flourishes in a character’s motions. There were so many individual bits where I would find myself thinking “There were a ton of cheaper ways they could have done this,” or “They could have skipped that little detail entirely and nobody would have noticed,” but it never really feels like the idea of saving money ever entered the producers heads... Well, except for the very occasional close-ups on an object while characters conversed off-camera, but that’s basically all I ever found in terms of corners being cut.

The character designs are quite unique, like the halfway point of a morph from realistic to chibi. Characters have large cartoony heads, with big eyes and specially angled chins, with everything below the neck looking a little too skinny for comfort, but otherwise anatomically correct, with this juxtaposition making them feel like caricatures that a japanese girl drew of her friends in her notebook rather than your typical anime characters. The only time this design choice ever feels uncanny or strange is during fanservice scenes, of which there are more than you’d probably expect, and the character’s proportions... Especially the relatively well-endowed figures of Run and Yuuko, the latter of whom the anime constantly sexualizes... Look really weird with their borderline Funko pop-like bodies. It takes some getting used to, but it should feel more or less normalized after a handful of episodes have gone by.

Either way, I haven’t gone seeking out the original manga or anything, but I’d be willing to bet whatever issue you might have with the design work is more attributable to the mangaka. What’s way more impressive about this series from a visual standpoint is, however, just how consistent it is. The character designs are a matter of taste, you’re either going to love or hate them, but they’re always on model and there’s never any distracting shift in style to break their frames for enhanced movement. You may not like the fanservice, but at least the character’s bodily proportions remain faithful regardless of whether they’re clothed or not. There’s never any dip in quality, and unless that sleepyhead Run is having a daydream, the world around them never devolves into fanciful Looney Tunes shit. With the characters already being half-chibi, there’s barely any super-deformed humor, and what little we do get just feels like apart of the show’s universe. Studio Gokumi did a fantastic job for their first solo outing as producers, and it’s a shame they’re not more well known for it.

It’s amazing what 13 years can do for your opinion on a piece of media. I first watched A Channel back in 2012, when the DVDs were on sale from Rightstuf, and I remember not liking it all that much. The humor didn’t really do anything for me, I found the writing mostly boring and lame, and I just thought of it largely like an Asylum film... A lazy and soulless rip-off of a bunch of other superior properties. I don’t know what it was specifically that brought me around to rewatching it in 2025, nor why I thought I would have enough to say about it to justify a review, but here we are... My second viewing of A Channel is now in my rearview mirror, and if I’m being completely honest, I really enjoyed it this time around. I no longer think it’s lame or soulless, I definitely don’t find it boring, and I quickly found myself appreciating the artistry of it a lot more than I did upon my first time through the series.

Well, one thing I was right about back in 2012 is that this anime is, in a lot of ways, a rip off of the entire 4-koma slice of life sub-genre, as it doesn’t take very long before you start spotting all of the individual elements that this anime stole from other, more successful anime, especially when it comes to individual character tropes. There are two ways, however, that my earlier assessment was wrong. First off, I watched this show for the first time about a year before I started writing reviews, and it didn’t take me very long into my hobby to develop an appreciation for good rip-offs, because there are a lot of fascinating and intriguing ways to use and reinvent stolen story elements. It is possible to base a cast of characters on really shallow tropes and just change the names... The entire cast of Haganai, and Kaori’s parents from Your Lie in April, for example... But a rip off can also be genuinely smart and transformative, like with the 2013 installment of Rozen Maiden.

Besides, considering how many ‘cute girls doing cute things’ have come out this millennium stole something or other from Azumanga Daioh, K-On and Lucky Star, rip-offs are more expected than not at this point. It doesn’t matter what you took, so much as what you do with it, and A Channel seems to have made the smart choice to build each of its four main cast members out of a blend of previously existing characters, creating something almost new in the process. Starting with Tooru, she is basically Konata from Lucky star, only without the constant media references, and she’s been combined with every dead fish-eyed little girl character you’ve seen before, and in fact, she feels to me like the kind of teenager that Renge from Non Non Biyori would eventually grow into. There is some depth to this, not just because she’s hinted to be an LGBT character(which I find slightly dubious, given how that aspect of her character is never directly confirmed, and Japan does have that old ‘romantic female friendships' thing), nor because she seems very neurodivergent coded(Which I can say with some confidence because I’m on the spectrum myself).

I say that because given her apparent social impairment and her desire to be close to the one special friend she can’t live without, it is genuinely fascinating to explore the world through her perspective as the main character, what with the way her own classmates perceive her lack of interest in them, to the dynamics she has to form with Run’s friends as she’s pretty much stuck interacting with them to be close to Run. Speaking of Run, you could describe her as a combination of energetic and bubbly characters like Yui from K-on, naive and sensitive characters like Tsukasa from Lucky Star, and space cadets with very unique thought processes like Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, with a little dash on narcolepsy on top. It’s not hard to understand why people gravitate towards her, as she comes off as both fun to be around and someone you kinda want to protect. I fully understand Tooru’s obsession with her. Nagi is your basic straight man character, obsessing over her weight and reacting to other character’s weird quirks like Koyomi from Azumanga Daioh, also showing some hints of maturity, responsibility and tsundere, like Kagami from Lucky Star, yet she’s just as willing to get up to mischief as her friends are.

And that brings us to Yuuko, probably the least interesting, but also possibly the most memorable of the main four, because lord is the lion’s share of the fanservice based around her. She’s the tall, busty girl with pretty long black hair who looks to be a mature beauty on the outside, but has a deceptively frail constitution on the inside, like Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh, Mio from K-on, and Miyuki from Lucky Star. She plays an important role in Tooru’s quest for Run, as she gives her underclassman something to be jealous of, leading to a one-sided contentious relationship full of surprisingly funny tit-punches. These four characters are absolutely great, I love how well they work off of each other, they all have fleshed out and distinct personalities, and while some pairings are more entertaining than others, there’s always some kind of funny situation that could arise from their interactions. The supporting cast isn’t quite as effective, in fact I kind of hated the teachers, but unlike Lucky Star, they’re used sparingly and don’t take up half the show.

Ultimately, though, the quality of any slice of life comedy comes down to, what else, the comedy. The problem with REVIEWING a comedy, ultimately, is that humor is extremely subjective, and there’s only so many ways you can say “I found it funny” or “I found it unfunny” before you’re just giving away the best jokes in a series. What’s even more unfortunate is that there isn’t THAT much complexity or depth to this particular series, with it’s biggest selling points being the characters and the comedy, so I could have very easily fallen into the trap of having nothing to say about it beyond this point... If it wasn’t for the fact that I did actually notice something very distinct about this show’s sense of humor. The one thing A Channel does that strikes me as unique is that it really seems to enjoy playing around with timing.

There are plenty of jokes I could describe from this show, if I were in the mood to start spoiling shit, where the writers seem to have been going out of their way to fuck with the expectations of the viewer, sometimes dragging out the period between set-up and a punchline a few beats longer than normal, or pushing your patience to the absolute limit, before giving you the punchline at the exact moment when your guard is down, so that even if you predicted something perfectly, it still hits you in an unexpected way. One of the best examples of this is right in the first five minutes of episode one, where Run is talking to some boys, and we see every detail of Tooru’s quest to assault them, from her running through the school, getting closer and closer with each cut, until she finally reaches Run... And just sort of waves the bat at the boys adorably, rather than laying out the expected smackdown.

There’s only two reactions you can have to that kind of a joke. You can either just stare at the screen bemused, not getting what the everloving fuck somebody sees in that kind of deliberate anti-comedy, or you can get it immediately and laugh yourself out of your seat. I have had both reactions, one for each time I’ve watched this show, so I know for a fact that they’re both legitimate. This kind of comedy is either not for you, or you’ll fall in love with it right away, and I guess I’m living proof that it depends both when, where and WHO you are when you watch it. I just vibed hard with a show that I once denounced as low grade derivative shovelware. I do think that lack of mass appeal is one of the reasons why A Channel never really caught on, but even moreso, I think the main reason is because it has no real sense of identity. Yeah, I can absolutely get behind the writing and the comedy, but as far as actual story content, it doesn’t really do anything that hasn’t been done better both before and since.

It doesn’’t have a unique setting, it doesn’t have a unique concept, the girls aren’t part of a club and they don’t really share any common interests, it doesn’t really go anywhere or do anything memorable with the implied yuri element... Hell, even Chronicles of the Going Home Club was easier to describe to people than this show. The only quirk to it’s identity is how grounded in reality it is, and how that aspect lends a nostalgic, relatable atmosphere to the moments between jokes. Aside from that, you could make a strong argument for A Channel not being a very interesting anime, and I’d be hard pressed to disagree with you, but I stil think it’s really entertaining and underrated for what it is.

A Channel is out of print from Sentai Filmworks. There is an OVA that may or may not be included on the stateside DVD, I’m honestly not sure. The original manga is not available stateside.

So if you haven’t picked up on this from my review thus far, A Channel is not for everyone. The comedy isn’t going to work for some people, and if the comedy doesn’t work, unfortunately, nothing else it does is really strong enough to justify sticking around. Give it credit, though, it also happens to be one of those rare anime that let you know right from the start, and with some degree of accuracy due to how consistent the writing and production values are, whether or not you’re going to like it. Personally, I really enjoyed it. Unlike 2012 Kyuubey, the humor struck me in exactly the right way, I love how experimental that humor can be, and the characters were immensely likeable both individually and as a group. It falters a bit with the supporting cast, and the scenes inbetween jokes can be a bit boring just as often as they can be chill and relaxing, but thankfully it’s only twelve episodes long, which I think was the perfect length to cover up those weaknesses while offering up some bite-sized fun.

I give A Channel a 7/10