JK Meshi!

Sometimes a show comes along that stands out for the wrong reasons, it could the content, art style or animation. JK Meshi! is a short series that suffers from one of these but can it overcome this to bring some entertainment to those watching or will it follow suit and crumble?

The premise here is simple and effective, three girls sit around discussing all sorts but mainly revising various topics for school. After they have finished revising or they get distracted they get hungry and Reina (mostly) cooks something up from the odds and ends of food she has around the kitchen. That’s it and for ... the length of the show (3 minutes per episode) it feels just right, the topics of revision never overstay their welcome and the snack preparation parts are short and to the point as well as being rather creative in what you can make.

The food part is where the title comes from. JK meshi being a simple to make food that almost anyone can make apparently. It’s nice that the series focuses on this instead of the more elaborate foods you see in other shows. Sure it may be nice to see these incredibly hard to make dishes in a series like Shokugeki no Soma but they aren’t realistically something you can make. Here it is not the case and whilst some of the dishes may look odd or unappetising they are doable. If I weren’t such a picky eater I would have made some of these myself. It stands out from the pack because of this.

The girls are all a treat, Ruriko is the lax one who does appear to be ditzy, Ryouka is the serious one and Reina is in the middle. Their conversations feel natural as it should since they are all friends and being that it is just those 3 the majority of the time it is more than welcome. Ruriko brings most of the humour to the series, be it thinking she saw a Neanderthal in Germany or mixing up historical figures and modern celebrities and much more. It is genuinely funny to see what they come up with and how the other two react to her comments and it happens almost every episode.

Now to the elephant in the room, I’m not going to beat around the bush or make up excuses here, the animation is incredibly poor, absolutely no doubt about that. It looks like it’s been done in Flash and probably has. It is choppy, the mouth movements barely match up to the voices and there is little to it in general. The last part is not really its fault, you have a series about girls talking to each other then cooking something of course there is going to be limited animation.

In the sea of anime that we have these days it stands out for the wrong reasons because of this which is unfortunate as it will deter viewers. It is the worst animation I have seen this year, only Triggers Uchuu Patrol Luluco comes close. The only positive that I can make in regards to this is that it is only a short series so it won’t bother you too much, hopefully. It feels wrong to say it kind of gets away with it due to that but it does in my eyes.

This cheapness crosses into the art as well, character models look a tad off and the designs basic but it seems it was needed like that for the animation. Thankfully the colour palette is nice and vivid and the foods look okay when they make them. The sound for what it’s worth is bland and forgettable. There is no OP or ED, just part of the soundtrack playing over a very breif credit sequence.

For me this really is a case of content overcoming a poor budget. If you can ignore the very cheap feel to this series I wholeheartedly recommend this, it is very fun to watch and really interesting to see what you can make from what you have left in the cupboard. The conversations are interesting and usually will bring a smile to your face or make you laugh so it does its job.

Many people miss that this project was more about showcasing and holding an event related to recruiting and encouraging up-coming seiyuu. For that reason, the animation is quite downplayed. It's more like a radio or short drama CD with flash animations as an after-thought.

Some of the banter is witty. It covers a large variety of topics, so the odds are decent of it hitting on something of interest to you at least once. If you don't come in expecting hidden depths, you'll at least find some running character jokes and that the girls are distinct and play certain set roles in manzai like bits. ... The show is quite self aware, and just as the meals cooked aren't meant to be gourmet, this is not meant to be more than a fun snack of an anime.

You'll mostly enjoy it if you enjoy audio dramas. If you're not into those, you'll probably hate this, expecting more of the common visual focus of anime. Sadly, the seiyuu do not have much great chemistry bouncing off of each other, either, but their individual performances save it and make it successful at what it's trying to be, despite some below average elements.

JK Meshi is the only anime I've ever seen that's so unbelievably bad that they literally had to have an episode where they straight-up admitted to having the lowest TV-ratings of the season, the worst production value and just being plain uninteresting, solely in order to try and score some sympathy points from their audience. When an anime is so embarrassingly awful that the best the show can do is make fun of its own miserable self, that's when you know you've hit rock bottom. And rightfully so, because this is the absolute worst anime I've *ever* seen.

In short, JK Meshi is a short ... series about three girls who every week discuss random trivia with each other for a minute or two, have a meal together, and then the episode is over. Nothing more, nothing less. End of story. But unlike your typical plotless slice of life comedy, in JK Meshi's case I legitimately don't understand what the purpose of the show is. Like it's not even a matter of taste really. Case in point: this is NOT a show meant for entertainment. There is ZERO enjoyment value in it. Why? Because it's an educational program. Literally the only thing it gives you is random trivia to learn. But the trivia is like elementary school level in terms of difficulty, for example “did you know that the capital of Australia is not actually Sydney, but Canberra?” Uhm yeah, I've known that since I was like 10 years old or something even if I live on the other side of the globe, thank you very much. Like who is this supposed to be aimed at? Elementary schoolers? Yeah right, good luck finding a 12-year-old who willingly watches lame educational programs on TV in their own spare time, not to mention that this is a late-night anime and thus evidentially not a kids' show. And adults should already know pretty much all these things given how basic it is. In other words... it's not just that the show is bad, but *there is no target demographic at all*. I find it sincerely baffling. I have no idea what the writers were thinking when they came up with this script.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, there's another equally horrendous aspect of this show. To put it bluntly, the animation quality is about 20 years outdated. When watching JK Meshi... if your eyes could puke... they would. The best way I can phrase it is that it looks just like an amateur made it in Flash in an hour or two of their spare time. It's just *that* bad. I can't believe something so putrid-looking was aired on TV in the year 2016. Like were they even trying when they made this show? The entire thing just feels like an intentional joke to me. If this is actually the best a studio can come up with, my faith in the anime industry is taking a serious blow here. Granted the producers of JK Meshi are some total unknowns as far as I know but still.

JK Meshi might be worth watching just for the rather... *unique* experience it provides, but otherwise I'd recommend you to stay away. FAR away.