Teppen—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Laughing 'til You Cry てっぺんっ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Synopsis
The Teppen Grand Prix is a competition established out of an appreciation for stand-up comedy. As devoted fans of such performances, Yayoi Sakamoto and her two friends—Yomogi Takahashi and Yuzu Hosono—form the stand-up trio Young Wai-Wai. After qualifying for the final round in the prix, the three go up against other comedic trios, but only one group can emerge victorious.
With participants housed in a famous dorm where many comedians before them have lodged, the contestants’ time living at the establishment will give them a chance to prove they have what it takes to make their audience laugh until they cry!
Review
Here I am, questioning to myself again: yet another manzai comedy? And after the blandness that is Maesetsu! that only really speaks to the native Japanese (which everyone else will not understand), is Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And yes, that is 15 exclamation marks, the most after Keijo with 8) gonna be any different? In a hopeful way, I wish I do, because of all the manzai comedy that has been seen, Teppen is easily the best out of the lot that I remember, though not without its issues.
We all understand comedy in all sorts of various ways. But when if it’s one that’s ingrained only to a certain demographic, that honestly is a bit hard to justify its existence to everyone else. And this is exactly what Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! has going for it, being a Japanese manzai a.k.a stand-up comedy that’s all the rage in Japan as a traditional pastime. Unfortunately, if you don’t understand much about that, I can tell you that it’s hard to really love this show for all that’s worth of its various references and such.
The basis for Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is exactly what it sounds like: a group of girls incorporated into a competition (the Teppen Grand Prix) from the views of 3 new and aspiring young rookies (Yayoi Sakamoto, Yomogi Takahashi and Yuzu Hosono) whom want to make it big with comedy, and finding themselves living together with other groups with their own quirks and features, all in the vying to win the competition with the best they could. And I’ll say that I give marks for some originality that’s done here to showcase the various groups according to their regions (Young Wai-wai from Kansai (region), Celebri-Tea from Tokai, Akudare Kingdom from Kanto, Invaders from Hokkaido, and Bullet Kunoichi from Kansai (area)) and fully establishing the real-life counterpart identities from where they come from, for all 15 girls.
As for the part of the show that supposedly wants to make the audience “Laughing ’til You Cry”…well that is pretty much a mixed bag. You either love it or find it boring (as is my case) that some references will be generally understood, but for a comedy skit performance, it isn’t as refined as say the CGDCT moments for the group that lives in Takako-so under the watch of “Onegai Muscle” rip-off Manager-cum-caretaker Seiji Tani. Throughout the course of the anime showing the groups’ various skits (at least on my watch), most of them were quite boring but not stale, as per the motive to infuse comedy where it works best. To this I say, maybe you can understand the inference better than I do, and there’re two sides to the comedy coin in this case.
The most impressive I’ve seen from this show is the mixed usage of Seiyuus that for a large character cast such as this, they did their job well to retain the feeling of infused, fine comedy. And this is brought forward to the OP, which is the most creative that I’ve both seen and heard of others calling it a banger, and it’s not without reason that its over-the-top goofiness allows to embrace its intentions wholeheartedly. And largely for that, it succeeded. May’n’s ED isn’t half bad either, now that I think of it, especially when the OST is that subpar and generic, there were a few standouts, though it honestly didn’t make my experience watching this any better, even with studio Drive’s whack-outta-the-wazoo like visuals, which also got the job done as it should.
It’s absurd, it’s wacky, it’s just comedy. And believe me, I’ve tried to like Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and what it has going for it, but it’s just boring and ludicrious to sit for 12 episodes expecting to understand references and body jokes, to the point of messing with my brain and thinking: “Comedy can be better than this, and it doesn’t have to be limited after all.”
Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’s definitely not a snoozefest, but a sleepfest of a dream with sheep baaing question marks on top of my head, now that’s more affirmative.
