Japanese Title: Happy☆Lesson (TV)
Related: Happy Lesson: Advance (sequel – included in review)
Happy Lesson: The Final (conclusion – included in review)
Happy Lesson OVA (alternative version)
Similar: Love Hina
Watched in: Japanese & English
Genre: Harem Comedy Slice of Life
Length: 13 episodes (TV), 1 OVA, 13 episodes (Advance), 3 episodes (The Final)
Positives:
- Tries something different for a harem, I suppose.
Negatives:
- The conflict is weak, the humour flat.
- No goal.
- The end undermines the series.
- Weak acting and atrocious dub.
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Chitose lived alone until his five female teachers decided to move in and become his ‘mothers.’ Well, it’s different from the typical five horny teen girls moving in with a guy (or is it?). The conflict is all about each teacher competing to see who is the best mother and most affectionate, without regard for his life or needs. These contests aren’t funny and mighty predictable – no matter the contest, the teachers tackle it in the same way to the same jokes.
Each teacher boils down to a “quirk” – the aggro sports teacher, cosplaying art teacher, dangerous experiments science teacher, kind literature teacher, and the school nurse who’s also a priestess. The characters being one-note isn’t different from other harem.
For a moment, I thought there would be something interesting in Happy Lesson when two realtors discover the promiscuous relationship and blackmail Chitose into selling the house. At least they acknowledge the impropriety, I thought! Alas, the only characters who question the situation are treated as villains or wrong for having qualms about five adults randomly living with a high school kid. This would be fine if it were funny – you can get away with anything as long as it’s funny. It isn’t.
The strangest detail is that Chitose isn’t even alone. He has two sisters! One is little (have to fill the Loli fetish somewhere) and the other is an adult popstar. Why aren’t they together? Sure, they bring up this point, but it becomes nothing more than another contest for the mothers – sisters included this time.
What’s the point of Happy Lesson? Where’s the purpose? Even weak harems have a goal – get the girl, get all the girls, or fix every girls’ problems. Happy Lesson is about the teachers wanting to be his mothers…when they are already his mothers…what? It’s more slice of life with no actual purpose, perhaps? No, they don’t have mild problems to solve either. All conflict is artificial, created by any given character, such as the mothers competing to be best mother by doing their own thing. Their ‘own thing’ is the unique skillset they bring to the family anyway – so why compete? The biggest conflict is the older sister wanting to give up singing, which is so sudden, so poorly conveyed that it lacks realism.
At least it is never about these teachers/mothers trying to bang him.
Wait, scratch that.
At least it is never about these teachers/mothers trying to bang him. One teacher gets sexual with him, competing with a school friend of his (seven women on the harem count, by the way), and unlike Please Teacher, the story does a poor job of it. It’s weird in how sudden, how empty this relationship is. What was the point? In the final scene, all the teachers/mothers want to marry him suddenly. Who wrote this rubbish? Furthermore, the “orgy” ending undermines the family values messages they were trying to convey in earlier seasons.
By the end, I only had one question left: why would all these women be interested in this kid? If my son were so bland, I would hari-kari myself in shame at having birthed such a useless being.
Art – Very Low
All characters suffer from ‘dead eyes’ syndrome – flat, no depth – and have bad designs with little animation. The colouring is bad as well.
Sound – Low
A bad script with weak acting is amazingly outdone by the atrocious dub, where they can’t even pronounce the protagonist’s name. Did they not watch a minute of the Japanese beforehand? Most performances sound like a fan dub, as though friends of the director rather than professionals did the work.
Story – Very Low
A [not] lonely student lives with his five female teachers who act as his mothers. What starts as a harmless, albeit boring, comedy goes full retard in the final season when it does the worst genre of anime proud.
Overall Quality – Very Low
Recommendation: Avoid it. Even if you stop before the final season, earlier episodes of Happy Lesson have nothing to recommend themselves but repetitive jokes and boredom.
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Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)
Positive: None
Negative:
Nefarious Reviews 