The Astronomy Club at Ebisugawa Public High School is in danger of closing down, due to having too few members. The first episode of the series is about a new first year student trying to join the club.
Even though they're supposed to be an astronomy club, there doesn't seem to be much emphasis placed on astronomy. Kyoko Todayama is the club's president, and she has a wild personality; she is also resistant to having new members joining the club. When Itsuki Noya wants to join the club in the first episode, Kyoko finds any way she can to keep Itsuki from joining.
Hakata Kanamori enjoys reading yaoi doujinshi, and she is constantly being sexually harassed by Kyoko. In the first episode alone, Kyoko has Hakata stripped down to her underwear and tied up. This is supposed to be one of major bits of humor in the episode, but I didn't find it to be funny. Also, there was at least one or two shots were Hakata tripped and fell, and the audience was provided with panty shots for some more "fanservice."
There were other characters that appeared in the episode, but most of them were rather forgettable. About the only other character that stood out was Shoko Omori, the teacher who is supposed to be the club's advisor; however, she keeps insisting that a cat is the club's advisor.
Ebiten is billed as being a comedy series, and from the execution, I can tell that it's intended to be funny. However, I don't appear to be part of the target audience, because I really didn't find any of this to be humorous; in fact, to me, it came across as being more strange than funny.
The animation isn't anything to write home about, either. Many of the characters seem to fall into the various design tropes that have become associated with "moe." I was actually quite surprised when I realized that one of these tropes was missing: a girl with glasses. Outside of that, most of those tropes were represented by the characters that appeared in the first episode.
Personally, I would recommend Ebiten to anime viewers who are 15 or 16 years of age and older.
| Ebiten | 10 +1 OVA | 2012 | Hideki Okamoto | AIC Classic | Sentai Filmworks |
