Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita Episodes 1 & 2 – First Impressions

Well, I’m late on this for two reasons; one, I completely missed the first episode of this somehow, and two, this show is just… odd.  I mean, there’s a big food shortage, and apparently (or at least according to the MAL synopsis) the human race is in a state of decline due to low birthrates, which would normally translate to some Mad Max wasteland apocalypse type stuff, but I guess not here.  Everything seems abnormally bright, happy and cheerful, kind of like playing Fallout in Pyro-vision or something like that.  People may starve to death, but just look at the cute little Fairies!  A bread robot rips itself apart and dies, but sentient chickens are running the factory.  I really don’t know what’s going on here.  And the fact that the ending sounds a lot like the Azumanga Daioh OP doesn’t help matters much.  The main thing I’m trying to figure out is whether or not this is going to be a straight up comedy or if it’s actually going to be somewhat serious, although after the second episode, I’m leaning much more towards the comedy side of the spectrum.  But even then there were just some parts that seemed really serious for no real reason, such as the town meeting in the first episode, or The Assistants story in the second.  The whole plot of the show just seems a little to macabre to be the setup for a straight-up comedy, but it somehow actually does work.  The first episode felt really random and kind of incoherent, but the second episode was actually pretty funny in my opinion.

Now, on the off chance that this series is actually going to be a serious series, then it’s off to a pretty odd start.  There hasn’t really been too much explanation of what’s going on or what the whole deal with the fairies is.  That’s probably the one thing that’s keeping me from admitting to myself that this is just some big screwball, random comedy; there’s just too much stuff going on.  There’s a food shortage for humans, who themselves are in decline, there’s now a race of sentient doll-things that inhabit the earth, the main character girl is a member of some type of organization for human-fairy relationships and acts as a mediator between them.  It just seems like a lot of back-story and lore to throw into something that’s just meant for a few laughs.  Also, none of the main characters actually have names, which is, at least in movies, a sure sign of some avant-garde, artsy stuff going on here.  The Girl hasn’t been given a name, The Assistant doesn’t have a name, The Grandfather doesn’t have a name, the only thing that was given so far was that ginger fairy with the Hitler ‘stache, and the bread robot, Loaf.  So we have a vibrant an colorful world of dying people with a food shortage where the main characters have no names… is this a Japanese stoner’s version of The Road, or something?

As stated before, I find this show to actually be pretty funny, which is obviously what they intended for a lot of it.  For me, the main source of most of the humor was from The Girl and some of her one-liner responses to the ridiculousness going on around her.  If indeed this is more than just a comedy, then I don’t have any problem with her a main character.  In most anime if you have a female lead you have about a 50 percent chance that they’re going to be a complete bimbo, but if you have a female lead with pink hair, that percentage goes up to about 99.  Thankfully, Pink Haired Main Character Girl actually seems to have a head on her shoulders, and also isn’t a bitch.  That also seems to be a theme in anime; if the girl isn’t a complete and total dumb-blonde dipshit, then she’s usually a haughty prick, and there usually isn’t a lot of middle ground.  Pink Floyd over here has thankfully been able to find it and actually provide some humor for us that isn’t dependent on how stupid she is.