The Show:
Suzuki Mika goes to Okitsu High School everyday. Thought she's
really short, she's not a student, she's a teacher. She's in charge
of the sophomore's, Class 2A, and it's pretty hard at times since most
of her students tower over her.
The class has a lot of unique characters too. There's Suetake,
the good looking jock who isn't too bright, and Seki, another attractive
boy, except he feels more comfortable dressing up as a girl. He's
not gay though, Kudo is. Kudo's the boy who has a crush on Suetake,
though the jock doesn't realize it. The homosexuals aren't limited
to the boys either. Kitagawa is a statuesque girl who's pretty smart,
but she has a crush on the teacher Mika. These characters, and more,
try Suzuki's patience as she tries to get through the day.
Each episode is a day in Mika's life. (Mika-sensei to her students.)
She gets teased by her students, pleads with her pupils to study, and generally
tries to make order out of the chaos that surrounds her. At home
she has to deal with her demanding mother and her overindulgent father.
This disc has the first four episodes in the series. The show
starts out with a funny show that introduces all of the characters and
sets up the premise for future shows. After that they have to go
through a health exam, where some of the girls are anxious about getting
weighed, and sports day where Mika has to referee a basketball game even
though she doesn't know how it's played. The class also has to take
final exams and if they don't pass they'll be sentenced to spend summer
break taking make-up classes, something that Kitagawa wants to do since
she'll get to spend more time with Mika-sensei.
The first thing that comes to mind while watching this show is Azumanga
Diaoh. The shows have a lot in common, they both are based on four
panel cartoons and feature several short stories in each episode, take
place in a public school, and have a large cast of unusual characters.
The shows aren't identical though. As where Azu had an overall plot,
so far it doesn't look like Doki will. The humor in this show is
quite different too. Many of the jokes in Doki are sexual in nature,
involving one of the homosexuals in the class, and these just don't pack
the punch that they should. At one point Mika asks Kudo to have a
talk with Suetake to see if he can get the jock to do his homework.
The gay intellectual imagines telling the object of his affections to "Do
it Suetake! Do it!" I get the joke, it just isn't too funny.
There are some humorous parts to the show, but I have a bad feeling
about the future volumes. In this disc with four shows the jokes
are starting to be repeated already. Kudo lusts after Suetake, and
Kitagawa tries to make Mika upset because she looks so cute when she's
angry. They do these jokes in every episode, and it gets a little
old by the end of the volume.
There also doesn't seem to be any story to this series. Just a
collection of short skits with a joke or two. That's not necessarily
a bad thing, the format has worked well in other shows, but the characters
and set up to this show doesn't seem to be able to support an anime series,
even one as short as this one is. We'll see I guess.
The DVD:
Audio:
The disc comes with a choice of the original Japanese soundtrack or
an English dub, both in stereo. I alternated tracks with each episode,
and I have to admit that I liked the English dub a little better.
The Japanese track has Mika sounding like a young kid which is a bit irritating.
The English cast gave her a more adult sounding voice which I thought worked
better. Both tracks sounded good though, with no dropouts or distortion.
Video:
The full frame video looks very good. The lines are tight and
the colors are solid. There was some aliasing, but it was fairly
minor. Like most of the recent anime that has been released, this
is a nice looking disc.
Extras:
The only extras included on this disc are clean opening and closings.
Final Thoughts:
This volume by itself isn't that bad. The show starts off pretty
well, and there's a lot of humor in these episodes. I don't have
high hopes for the rest of the series though, since they've already started
repeating jokes and the characters all seem to consist of one character
trait. I'm hoping that they expand the character's personalities
a bit and come up with some new situations for the rest of the series.
As it is though, this is a fun volume and it is recommended.
