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Senpai Club, Swedish-made, anime-inspired, Japanese-speaking animation, is back! 【Video】

Casey Baseel Feb 25, 2014
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Last month we laughed along with the Swedish animators Olivia Bergstrom and Eric Bradford as we watched the first scenes of their anime-inspired creation Senpai Club. Now the pair, collectively known as makebabi.es, is back for another round of parody featuring dangerously pointy anime chins, ostensibly handsome upperclassmen, and just maybe even more stealthy bilingual gags with Senpai Club Episode 1 Part 2.

In last month’s installment of Senpai Club, we were introduced to Tsumiki Domen, who observed anime’s oldest and strictest bylaws by waking up late on her first day of high school, eating a piece of toast as she ran down the street, and literally bumping into a handsome stranger.

When last we saw Tsumiki, she had just wandered into a meeting of the mysterious Senpai (Upperclassmen) Club. But just who are all these pointy-chinned older students? After weeks of waiting, we finally get to find out with Senpai Club Episode 1 Part 2.

In keeping with the rules of one-girl many handsome-men anime, Tsumiki meets a crew of color-coded upperclassmen, starting with stereotypical Hero Senpai.

There’s also the briefly-featured Rock n’ Roll Senpai…

…and energetic Jerry Lewis impersonator Bowl Cut Senpai.

Like many bad boys of anime for girls, Gang Leader Senpai’s tough talk can’t quite compensate for his ridiculous wardrobe choices.

Likewise, Lady Senpai carries on the tradition of female characters in girls’ anime for the protagonist to be alternatingly inspired and flustered by.

And finally, we meet Computer Senpai, who we were tempted to refer to as eye candy for intellectuals before we noticed his health-conscious Carrot-brand laptop.

Computer Senpai seems to hold a bit of a leadership position in the group, as he launches into a lecture on the best ways to ignore a girl, one of the time-tested techniques for becoming the perfect anime boyfriend.

Like the first installment of Senpai Club, Episode 1 Part 2 has a couple of fun treats if you can multitask enough to follow the spoken Japanese dialogue while reading the English subtitles. For example, when Tsumiki tries to introduce herself, she begins with her family name, Domen, as per the linguistic custom in Japan. The bashfully stuttering Tsumiki’s repeated “Do…Do…Do” gets subtitled as “T-T-T” as though she’s speaking English and can’t get past the first part of her given name.

The satire is so finely sliced that as times it’s hard to tell if makebabi.es is cracking wise or simply unaware of the exact meaning of the Japanese being spoken. For example, one of the Senpais picks up on the fact that Tsumiki is an underclassman, and thus doesn’t belong in their club.

However, the word he uses to announce his suspicions, jitsugen, doesn’t mean “realize” as in “notice,” but “realize” as in “make true” or “make happen,” as in the phrase “He realized his dream of becoming a doctor.”

There’s also the way the characters consistently refer to each other using the phrases shonen and shojo. While they technically do translate as boy and girl, they usually carry the connotation of a young child, and while an adult might use them when talking about high school students to drive home his belief that they’re still just a bunch of kids, they’re not exactly the most natural way for teens to talk about themselves.

Still, there’s more than enough clearly intentional humor to keep viewers entertained, and the series is even attracting fans in Japan, who’ve had the following to say.