Well, I guess you should aim for the wasteland when you're creating a big project, like a bishoujo game? I'm sorry.... I just can't come up with a good way to start off this review. After all, this anime is just NOT GOOD. I only picked this up because I wanted to watch a visual novel-based anime this season, and when I read the description, I was expecting another Saekano. Well, what I got was Saekano if Saekano was less interesting.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my review of "Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu", known in English as "Girls Beyond the Wasteland".
Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu follows Buntarou Hojo, a.k.a. Bunta, who has no idea what he wants to do in the future. One day, he writes a script for the drama club and ends up being approached by a girl named Sayuki Kuroda. Sayuki is aiming to create a bishoujo game, and she wants Bunta to write the story for it. They also recruit other students at their school, like Atomu, Yuuka (Bunta's friends with the latter being talented at acting), Yuuki (an extremely shy girl who is a talented artist), and Andou (an otaku who really wanted to create a yaoi game), and they form the group "Rokuhara". Together, Rokuhara works on the game "24 Hours with Asamori-san" and aims for the wasteland! ....Apparently.
Now, the story for this anime is dull and cliched. Believe it or not, I don't mind cliches too much, but this anime couldn't help but bug me about it; the story was just so predictable thanks to the cluster of cliches. I honestly don't have a lot to say about the characters, either. All of the characters are either uninteresting or annoying, and I really didn't care about what happened to any of them. If there was one interesting character in this anime, I'd say it's Atomu, but that's only because I found his "dark side" just slightly amusing. Other than that one quality, he's just as boring as everyone else.
Well, the story and characters may be forgettable, but surely, the animation, voice acting, and opening and ending songs can't be as bad, right? In all seriousness, they aren't as bad, but the animation almost was. It was kind of easy to see that the studio behind this anime, Project No.9, put little thought into the animation. The opening and ending themes, which are respectively "Wasterlanders" by Sayaka Sasaki and "Sekai wa Kyou mo Atarashii" by Haruka Chisuga, Kana Hanazawa, Satomi Sato, and Satomi Akesaka, aren't the best songs ever, but they're doable. The voice acting isn't bad either, considering Kana Hanazawa is voicing one of the main characters (Yuuka), but.... is it just me, or does it sound like they're not having a lot of fun with this one? (That's reasonable, though, considering how this anime turned out.)
With all of that being said, Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu was a below average experience and an overall disappointment. Are you looking for an anime where the main characters are creating a game? I'd prefer that you watch "Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata" instead, because at least that one has better animation and characters that are actually better to follow. If you insist on watching Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu, please don't compare it to Saekano, because you'll find that it's a waste of time in comparison.
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