Green Green

Green Green is…….oh boy. Green Green is an anime that was based off of a supposedly pornographic visual novel. I've never played the visual novel for myself, so I’ll have to take people’s word for it. Green Green was something one of my friends told me about. He told me that I should review it because of how bad it was. Is it really that bad though?

Story:

The “plot” of this series revolves around Yusuke, & his “friends” which consist of 3 idiotic perverts who only have sex on the mind living at an all male boarding house (though it’s only all male for a few minutes at most). A school bus carrying a bunch of girls, who were pretty much made to transfer against their will, then arrives at the academy, we then meet midori, a girl that apparently knows Yusuke because she comes from the future in an alternate timeline. Shenanigans ensue, nothing really matters until the last 2 episodes, the end.

Where do I even begin? Well, for starters, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing that would move the plot along anyway. For the first episode, we get “set-up” for what’s “in-store” for us in the following episodes to come. The problem is, nothing but shenanigans are in store for us until episode 10, which is when this anime remembers that it has a plot it’s supposed to tell. The second problem, the story explains absolutely nothing. We aren’t given a single god-damn detail about what the story is supposed to be about until the final 2 episodes. But by then it’s too late, as anybody with sanity (which isn’t myself unfortunately) would’ve dropped this show and moved.

Now onto the “comedy” of this series. The comedy in this series is the same juvenile, loud, random, & obnoxious humor that you would expect to find in just about any ecchi-fanservice anime. But the absolute pants on top of this shit sundae is just how creepy some of these “jokes” become. We not only see one of the 3 perverts sleep next to his “kid sister”, eat food next to her, & then get in a how should I say, peculiar position. But we also get to see the guys having incredibly putrid fantasies of some of the girls on campus. So the humor isn’t only juvenile & toilet, but it’s also outright creepy, what a combination.

Characters:

Yusuke is the straight man, and pretty much nothing else. Yusuke is probably the least irritating of the characters in this show, I really can’t get too riled up at a nobody who doesn’t see a lick of development throughout the entire 12 episodes.

Futaba is a strong girl, as well as the only other sane person in this anime. I can’t really get mad at her either, especially seeing as she beats up the idiotic perverts, which is incredibly satisfying might I add.

Next on our list is Midori. Midori is only defined as being hopelessly obsessed with Yusuke. She’s also supposed to be some girl from the future, but the anime doesn’t bother explaining a damn-thing about that.

Next on our list are the 3 little perverts. I’m lumping these 3 together because they’re practically the same character, they might as well have just been the same drawing with different clothes trying to mask the fact, lord knows it would certainly fit with how incredibly lazy everything about this anime is.

Yet another big problem with this anime is just how lacking & flat all these characters are. They’re pretty much only defined by one character trait & nothing else. Which could work given that this series is a “comedy” & as long as the characters provide a good comedic dynamic between each other, everything should be fine. But as I pointed out earlier, the comedy in this series is juvenile & creepy, so you’ve already failed on the comedy by itself, so by that point, you wouldn’t even know how to create good character dynamics if you failed at the basic comedy. The characters also see 0 development throughout the entire run-time of this anime. There are moments that may seem like some development is going to take place, but after those moments, things pretty much go back to the way they were. Which makes the whole thing frustrating above all else.

Art:

The artwork on display here is absolutely atrocious, the backgrounds are lazy & repetitive, the character designs are hideous, the colors are drab, & the overall world design looks incredibly basic. The animation on the other hand, is ridiculously lazy. They took every corner cutting technique you could imagine, shots that don’t show the characters mouths to get away with not having to animate the lips (which would’ve looked like shit anyway), reused animation, sliding still images across the screen, literally being still images, 0 detail, if there’s a corner cutting technique that I haven’t mentioned, I can guarantee you this show took it. The cinematography is just as lazy as the animation is. Flat & lifeless shots panning over still images, what masterful directing you have Green Green!

Sound:

The voice acting is atrocious, the comedy is incredibly over-acted, the characters are either yelling almost all the time, or they’re in such a monotone voice that makes it sound like the voice actors were so invested in their role. I watched both the English Dub & original Japanese Audio, they’re equally horrendous as one another, but at least the Japanese side could actually pronounce the names of the characters correctly, so that makes it win by default.

The music honestly isn’t bad, it’s nothing special, but I feel like this would’ve been a decent OST had it been used in a different show. Als, this is green green we’re talking about, so the OST is just a barely (actually, no, not even barely) salvageable piece out of this shitty shitty anime.

Final Thoughts/Overall

Do I even need to say it at this point? Green Green gets a 1/10, there is absolutely nothing positive here. The story is on pause for 98% of the runtime, & when it does decide to rear its head, it’s so poorly explained. The animation is ridiculously lazy, the art is atrocious, the voice acting is atrocious, the characters are flat caricatures, there’s nothing here. I now fully understand why the friend who told me I should take a look at this warned me at the last second as to why I should’ve reconsidered. I’m quite honestly ashamed of myself for watching this past the first episode, and this is coming from a man who watched Dark Cat & Sword for Truth TWICE! Do I even need to say it? Don’t watch this anime please. This isn’t even funny bad, it won’t even give you a new appreciation for any of your favorites, this anime is just outright horrible in every conceivable way. Is this worse than Kennel Tokorozawa though? By technicality yes, but I would say no. See, I at least got some laughs out of how lazily made this show was, I didn’t laugh once throughout Kennel, Green Green also didn’t create a dog character that I ended up hating either. Regardless though, Green Green is utter crap, and I implore you all to heed my advice & stay away from this monstrosity.