My Neighbor Seki-Kun: A Wonderful Way To Spend Your Time

For those of you not in the know, Seki-Kun was an anime that was apart of Jon Spencer’s twitter watch along where a few of us would watch three episodes a monday, and report on our findings and thoughts, and then read other people’s thoughts. Seki-Kun’s episodes were only seven minutes long, so this was easily doable. We all use the hashtag #AniTwitWAtches on twitter it to keep our thoughts findable and organized. Considering that this watch along ended in the beginning of September, that should tell you how slow I am when it comes to writing posts most of the time. That aspect of waiting a while shouldn’t be any sort of mark against the series though. There is much more then meets the eyes with Seki-Kun which makes it a more then entertaining watch.

So what is My Neighbor Seki-Kun: The Master of Killing Time about? It’s about a boy named Seki goofing off in the back of a classroom and our protagonist Rumi Yokoi getting distracted by his doings with her overactive imagination. No seriously, that’s almost every episode with a lot of changes and the reason why it’s a short series. There is always more to dig into though. How elaborate or imaginative Seki-Kun’s shenanigans happen to be are a sight to behold sometimes with Rumi’s over active imagination to go along with it. Seriously, he one time had a post office that pushed notes around a classroom like a normal post office would in terms of paper work and everything. Then Seki-Kun’s super robot family toys were featured in the best episodes of when the class was outside! Plus, there was another time when he took a remote controlled car driving test on his desk and followed through the same procedures of most driving tests. With his sense of the fanatical imagination alongside that, there is just so much this show has to offer.

There’s other things that happen which make the show more interesting too. Learning about our character through off hand marks or relaxations is one of them. Like, we learn about how cruel yet meticulous seki-kun can be or hobbies and things Rumi does outside of school which adds more character to the anime, but there is always more. Seki-kun doesn’t talk, but we know so much about him anyway. At some point, the show knows it needs to shake up it’s formula and introduce more people to read the situation between Rumi and Seki-Kun run wrong or just more locations, obstacles, and more people to shake the situation up. A small amount of continuity makes the show more fleshed out then expected as well. I love that sense of variability because you never know what to expect from this show and that sense of unexpectedness makes it more powerful.

There is a lot passion behind this short anime’s production. Art, animation, sound, and whatever they could come up with are oddly fantastic for a short series involving kids in class doing silly things. Plenty of games and ideas require a lot of creative art direction and developed fantasy character designs fighting each other, which is a lot of fun honestly. There are so many small things animated in this series, like the remote control car’s track on a disk, that it really does feel like the production crew really loved animating this short series. All the proof that is needed comes from the super robot family song styled like a 1970’s anime opening, but it’s just about the family living their lives. Was it needed? Oh no, the show could have gone without it? Is it awesome? Hell yes. I feel like that is the selling point of this short anime for me. The effort and the super robot family song.

If you ever need an anime series to watch when you have a short amount of time to waste, Seki-Kun is fantastic for that purpose. It’s also just an amazing watch in general. I don’t think that the production crew behind My Neighbor Seki-Kun ever felt like they created an excellent all purpose comedy anime, but they did. Especially since each episode is a single skit, which is different compared that are at the full 24 minute episode length instead. That’s not a bad thing, but it limits how you can watch the series. That’s about all I have to say, really. I can’t love this series enough.

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