Happy Lesson: Teachers' Pet Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Happy LessonDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Animated, Box set, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 425 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Adv Films
Movie Reviews of Happy Lesson: Teachers' Pet Collection
Movie Review: A decent series, a poor release
Summary: 3 Stars
There are two different things I'd like to comment on, Happy Lesson the anime and Happy Lesson as it was released by ADV.
The anime is perfectly serviceable, but nothing more. The characters come in two flavors: one dimensional caricatures with a single personality trait, and vanilla characters with absolutely no personality. The idea of a shinto priestess school nurse trying to exorcise the bad luck from the hapless main character is great, and I quite enjoyed it the first time, when Urusei Yatsura did it. The second time around wasn't nearly so much fun, and its not hard to understand why: Yayoi-sensei is no Sakura, and Chitose is no Ataru Moroboshi. Most of the enjoyment derived from the story comes in spotting which more famous and more interesting character was reimagined for the show, and which generic misadventure Chitose is going to find himself in next. I'd like to think these were homages done for the sake of parody, but more often than not they come off as flagrant ripoffs done by writers trying to meet a deadline by replacing story with formula.
The only place the anime really shines is in the animation itself. The changes of animation style really work nicely to move the story along, and while its maybe not the most beautiful anime in the world, they certain managed to make the girls look interesting, if nothing else. In fact at times I wonder if they made this show on some sort of bet: to see if they could produce a passable character driven drama anime with no interesting characters to drive the story along. The answer is yes, but just barely.
As for the ADV release, the "Teachers' Pet Collection", that's not so good. The English Language voice acting, though surprisingly available in 5.1 surround sound, is positively atrocious. Seriously, guys... this isn't 1990, and anime isn't some rare thing you see on the Sci-Fi Channel at 4 AM on Saturday anymore. The voice actors/actresses are in many cases totally out of character, which is hard to imagine given the over-the-top one trait personalities most of the mamas have. I don't know how you could mess up generic female gym teacher, but by God, they found a way. Even worse than that though, is the way they butcher names.
I mean, its painfully obvious the voice talent, and whoever was in charge of managing them, didn't watch a single episode in the original Japanese (and perhaps had never been exposed to anything in the Japanese language in their entire life). When you can't even pronounce the name of the series' main character right, you might as well hang it up. Chitose is not even that hard a name to pronounce, how they decided to call him Cheetos I'll never know.
The English language version is totally unwatchable because of this, so I'd recommend reverting to the Japanese. The downside to this is, while the Japanese voice talent is much, much better, the audio track is in basic 2.0 only, no surround sound here. Moreover, the menu offers no way to select the Japanese audio track without also selecting the English subtitle track. You can, of course, turn off the subtitles after the show starts, but that barebones menu system is just emblematic to what is ultimately a very substandard release.
Even the subtitles feel tacked on, you get the gist of what is being said most of the time, but sometimes it felt like the story was being altered to more closely agree with the English language version. Moreover, sometimes, like the chanting by the priestess in the aforementioned purification episode, they decide not to even bother and try to subtitle it, and just leave you wondering. I guess the best thing you could say about the subtitles is that they're in coherent English, which is the only indication from the quality of the menus that this is an official release and not, in fact, a Hong Kong bootleg compiled from fansubs somebody grabbed off peer to peer.
Summary of Happy Lesson: Teachers' Pet Collection
What teenage boy wouldn't want to be around beautiful women? Chitose, what's who! He's been adopted by his high school teachers, who actually move in with him. But their good looks are overshadowed by their near-psychotic maternal zeal!Anime & Manga DVD Video
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