Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! ‒ Episodes 1-3
I began this year in an introspective state, drawing on my personal history to write about the quiet poignancy of Journal with Witch as it related to my own evolving relationship to womanhood and its many facets. I will end this year writing about the loud and bawdy antics of a bunch of horny teenage assholes. I am pleased with this trajectory.
As part of my ongoing quest to find out what kind of woman/person/undefined electrochemical entity I am and wish to be, I've been looking inward less and focusing more on spending time with others. While I haven't metamorphosed into a social butterfly, it's been a good change of pace, and I've been having more fun daily. Consequently, Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! feels like the right series at the right time for me. This is a fundamentally fun work of harem smut with a keen eye for the art of cartooning, and it uses those powers to enhance both the comedy and horniness at its heart.
I have not yet read any of the manga, but I have done a little research on its author. Muchimaro is the latest example of a fetish artist who has been able to apply their skills to the mainstream, and who has done so successfully enough to garner an anime adaptation. My go-to example is Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, in which mangaka Nanashi took an original character from their fetish works and replanted them into a tamer romcom setup with lighter fetishistic elements sprinkled in. The manga sold millions, and the anime earned an increasingly rare second season. It's a formula that works. Here, Muchimaro seems to have done much the same, repurposing an OC (and/or self-insert, given that her original name was Muchimaro-chan) into the form we now know as Komaro.
Incidentally, Muchimaro started as a ryona artist, which is a fetish I do not have the time or energy to explain in the middle of an episode review. Suffice it to say, this origin explains why we see Komaro get hit by that truck early on.
Muchimaro is also adept at romcom construction. The cast is a good balance of jerks and weirdos, and their interactions are a good balance of sociopathy and tenderness. The jerks include Tan the perpetual tease, Arisu the bruiser, and Satomi the dirtbag homeroom teacher. The weirdos include Hisoko the neurotic president, Komaro the accident-prone shortstack, and Ume's sister Sho, to an extent (she veers into jerk territory when hacking his phone). Ume, as the protagonist, possesses a mix of both qualities, and I think the series correctly utilizes him as the straight man to the student council's various hormonally charged antics. This is a personal preference, but I think harem comedies work better when the girls are perverts, and the guy is more uptight, rather than the other way around.
And speaking of personal preferences, I must confess to adoring how awful Satomi is. Our introduction to this character shows her clipping her toenails in front of her student. She has completely given up, as further evidenced by her concern about her bonus and the cigarette she lights up on school grounds. I love this character. As far as the actual student council goes, Tan is the runaway hit. Because this is only the first review, I'm going to hold myself back for now, but trust me, I could write a whole dissertation on the amount of Gender going on with him. An otokonoko/femboy archetype possessing a chest that looks to be several months into feminizing hormone therapy opens the door to some fascinating sociocultural analysis about queerness and identity as it relates to current communities, particularly those online. For the time being, though, I think he's a pretty funny piece of garbage.
The third episode's suppository scene is Student Council Holes' strongest skit yet, and again, balance is key. The “joke” is readily apparent and rendered in raunchy detail, but it also communicates that Ume feels genuine concern for Tan's well-being, while Tan finds himself in a more vulnerable position than he's used to (in the literal and metaphorical senses). That genuine connection elevates both the titillation and the comedy. Additionally, it particularly amuses me that Ume's escape into the world of Japanese literature features two prominent Yukio Mishima novels. I wonder what Mishima would think if he could see this scene today.
The real stars of this anime are not onscreen, however. After three episodes, I'm confident calling Student Council Holes one of the best-looking anime of the season, and while everyone on staff deserves credit, there are a couple of names I want to highlight. Director Naoyuki Tatsuwa, like many directors who stand out to me, cut his teeth in the industry working at Shaft. That legacy can be felt in Monogatari-esque flairs like the graphic design and typesetting, as well as in the more dynamic camera angles used throughout sketches, which utilize largely blank backgrounds to more easily facilitate this dynamism. Ryo Imamura, the character designer and chief animation director, has a style that immediately stood out to me too. Viewers may remember his work on the excellent adaptation of Onimai, and that same degree of quality can be found here.
In fact, I'd call Imamura's direction the most paramount to what works in this anime, because there's a particular focus on anatomy that behooves the sexed-up subject matter. Extra detail is given to bones and musculature. Clothes wrinkle and hang off the body believably. Tan's HRTitties jiggle under his jacket. There's a carefully constructed sense of tactility that suffuses each scene, and it makes the show fun to watch purely from an animation or anatomy pervert's perspective. Yet the series also appeals to the regular kind of pervert. That wide net, I believe, is what draws me into this series. The animation may not always stay stellar, and the jokes may not always work, and the characters may grow grating. But right now, I have a good feeling that each episode should exhibit some manner of artistry that will be worth watching and digesting. These holes have hidden depths, and I'm diving in.
Episode 1 Rating:
Episode 2 Rating:
Episode 3 Rating:
Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is currently streaming on OceanVeil.
Sylvia is on Bluesky for all of your posting needs. She loves hole. And yes, she is reusing that joke from her Dorohedoro reviews. You can also catch her chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.
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