It's Akari Akaza's first day of middle school, and she's gotten the day off the a great start by... forgetting she even has to go to school. Fortuantely, friends Kyoko and Yui are prepared for this - it's not like Akari hasn't shown airhead tendencies before. While waiting for Akari to change, though, Yui goes snooping in Akari's sister's bedroom - and finds that she may have worrying siscon tendencies. Later, one of the first things to do at a new school is choose the club you'll be joining - and with the girl wanting to do nothing more than laze around, they take over the room of the now-disbanded Tea Club and start one of their own. Welcome to the Amusement Club...
Initial visual impression: it's K-On!, only funnier. Akari is Yui, Chinatsu is Azusa, Kyoko is Mugi and Yui is Mio. I think. This comparison is by no means a bad thing: K-On! was great as far as it went, but needed a dose more funny to counter out all the time the girls sat there doing nothing. Yuru Yuri adds that funny, and never really lets up on it, right the way through.
You can't have 'yuri' in the title without a little girl-on-girl action, though, and that's probably where most people who take offence at the series will take it from. There's a constant undercurrent of girl wanting to jump girl, particularly in Kyoko's attitude to Chinatsu and the Kanako-esque way in which Student Council member Chitose thinks of her boss Ayano. We're not talking 'subtle' here. But I'm not above enjoying cheap laughs, and it works for me.
THE GOOD: Genuinely funny, looks good, good interplay between the characters...
THE BAD: ...even if they are all two-dimensional stereotypes with absoloutely no depth. Humour's terribly subjective, too, and not everyone's going to find the yuri side funny.
I made the mistake of checking the ANN preview guide for this, and saw it getting mediocre reactions across the board - but then it's not the sort of show that rocks the boat of ANN staffers, really. Bah to them - this is simple, mindless fun. A keeper.
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