Anime / Anime-Gataris

Minoa, Neko-senpai, and the rest of the Anime Club ^{Clockwise from center}  Minoa Asagaya, Neko-senpai, Miko Kouenji, Kouki Nakano, Erika Aoyama, Kai Musashisakai, and Arisu Kamiigusa

When she was a kid, Minoa Asagaya saw an anime that she instantly fell in love with. As an ordinary high school student, Minoa still wonders about that anime, but can't remember its title. The resident rich girl, Arisu Kamiigusa, is a closet otaku with almost encyclopedic knowledge about anime, but not even she can identify the anime Minoa describes.

Together, they decide to reopen their school's anime club, both because they love anime and to see if anyone else can assist Minoa in her search. Joining Minoa and Arisu are light novel enthusiast Miko Kōenji, cosplay expert Erika Aoyama, the eccentric Kai Musashisakai, and idol lover Kouki Nakano. Minoa is very new to the anime scene, so she learns a lot about anime, the industry that makes it, and the fans that consume it.

However, there's something strange about their club room: set in one side of its walls is a large wooden door. When Minoa first opens it, a talking cat tumbles out. Dubbed Neko-senpai by Minoa, the cat warns her to never open the door again, though he doesn't specify why. Combined with a mysterious barrette, it seems like Minoa's anime journey will be quite the adventure.

Anime-Gataris (アニメガタリズ, lit. "Anime-Chats") is a comedy anime made by WaoWorld. It aired during the Fall 2017 season, and is available for streaming on Crunchyroll. The English dub was handled by Funimation. The TV series serves as a prequel to a series of six episode OVA shorts called Anime-Gatari. The OVA is centered around a college anime club, and was shown between films at a single theater.

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This series provides examples of:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The ED dance performance by the first year trio, which itself is an homage to Love Live!. Which should also serve as no surprise when the same trio perform the same song and dance live in front of the entire student body and a stadium full of outside guests on episode 8, as another reference to Love Live!, particularly of School Idol Project's and Sunshine's first arc of both series' main trios saving their club from getting shut down by the student council by performing live in front of a huge crowd.
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: The student council holds a lot of power, working a lot of times to shut down the anime club. They serve as the antagonists for much of the anime. Downplayed, however, as the other clubs continue associating with the anime club despite being "halted" by the council. We later find out that the only reason they have this much power is because the principal is using them to enact his prejudices against anime, and they're shown to be a perfectly normal council in the reconstructed world to drive the point home. They were perfectly normal before, permitting the club to start with. It's only after Anime Tropes began infiltrating that they became an oppositional Absurdly Powerful Student Council.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Erika Aoyama is voiced by Anju Inami, whose best known role is Chika Takami, the plucky, hyperactive leader of School Idol group Aqours from Love Live! Sunshine!!. So what kind of character does Erika dress up as on episode 3? A Chika expy complete with a similar pose◊ to one of Chika's own◊ in SIF! It gets even better when you realize that Tsubaki, the student council president opposing the existence of the Anime Club which Erika is the leader of, looks, acts, and even has the exact same role (at least initially) as Dia, also from Love Live! Sunshine!! .
  • Yui is asked to voice an obvious Megumin expy complete with Megumin's outfit and even catchphrase in the Anime Club's anime short for the Sakaneko School Festival on episode 7. Naturally, she and Megumin share the exact same VA: Rie Takahashi.
  • Arisu lets out Chitose Karasuma's signature laugh in episode 7. "Gahaha!"
• All of the Other Reindeer: In Episode 11, Minoa suddenly finds herself shunned by the entire school when a rumor that she hates anime passes around.
• Art Shift:
  • The anime the club produces and shows in Episode 8 deliberately looks more amateurish.
  • In Episode 9, Nakano and Neko-Senpai demonstrate the Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame while discussing it.
  • Played for horror in Episode 11, when Minoa notices other characters suddenly shifting into an older art style. The end of the episode has her put on glasses that change everyone to look like they're uncolored keyframes.
• Big Bad Slippage: Nakano slips into a main antagonist role by episodes 9 to 12.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • As for BNPs that aren't about anime, "Aunt Doughnut" appears in Akihabara in Episode 3, "Numazon" packages get delivered in Episode 4, and a "Packy" box is spotted in episode 6.
  • A Somy DAT shows up in episode 8. It's also likely to be a Shout-Out to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
  • Arisu uses the search engine Guulgle in episode 9.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: A lot of the content for series within the series changes spelling depending on the episode, potentially losing the reference in translation:
  • Ru:Zero is spelled as Roux:Zero at least once in the subtitles.
  • The "useless goddess" of AnoSuba is written as "Akina" in the episode 6 subs unlike episode 5's more faithful "Aquina" spelling.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Upon learning the principal looks nothing like the bust of him outside the school, the anime club blames his appearance on "the animation [getting] worse".
  • Episode 11 completely shatters the fourth wall. Minoa suddenly becomes acutely aware of various anime conventions, like floating hearts and time skip montages. Nearly everyone else thinks she's gone crazy. By episode 12, the only thing she falls short of is recognizing Anime-Gataris itself.
• Brick Joke: Kai Kai is the first person to call Nakano by his first name, even pronouncing its Alternate Character Reading correctly. Everyone else immediately goes with calling him "Aurora" from that point on. Fittingly for someone who knows that information, Kai Kai is the one to concept and give out naming options for his character in the new reality. Everyone in the club votes on "Aurora".
• Briefcase Full of Money: Arisu has her personal butler Sebas carry one in episode 7. It even glows.
• Butlerspace:
  • Sebas can instantly appear out of thin air whenever Arisu calls for him.
  • Averted at the Anime convention, where the staff scold him for trying to cut the line, resulting in a perplexed Arisu.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: When Mai shows off for the cameras at the KOF press meeting, Yuri is seen showing her envy of her teammate's bust size. Busty girls are one of Kai's secret fetishes, which helps reinforce his attraction to Miko. Funny enough, even her development stage design lists this as her most notable trait outside of light novels.
• Cast Full of Crazy:
  • The Student Council is full of people obviously disturbed or under the thumb of someone else.
  • The student body is so easily influenced they could come out from an Orwell novel.
  • Even the Anime Club. While they first come off as rather decent people, it is eventually revealed to be full of Cloudcuckoolanders, even the teacher!
• Cloudcuckooland: Starting from episode 9, almost everyone gradually grew more unhinged, becoming more unable to differentiate between anime and reality, and more anime-esque things begin popping up in the real world.
• Creator Breakdown: In-Universe —The school's principal is actually the director behind Ultra Katharsis Kortisi: Eternal Symphony, the anime in Minoa's dream. Due to a shoddy pilot episode, the principal abandoned the project and swore off anime.
• Cool Big Sis: Erika to everyone in the anime club, especially to the first year trio. Maaya, Minoa's older sister, is one to her as well.
• Creator Cameo: The anime's director shows up in the penultimate episode, as a sort of Man Behind the Man for Nakano— only to be killed offscreen in the narration of the finale.
• Determinator: The club members will save their club from the student council, no matter how many times they try to shut them down.
• Dirty Old Man: Neko-sensei has the voice and personality of one, at any rate. The only reason the plot kicked off at all was because he was excited to hear a high school girl on the other side of the door.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The ending theme is performed by GATALIS, which consists of voice actresses Kaede Hondo (Minoa), Sayaka Senbongi (Arisu) and Hisako Tōjō (Miko).
• Elephant in the Room: Neko-sensei in general, being a bipedal talking cat with sunglasses, who conveniently gets ignored by everyone. Nakano pointing this out to Minoa is what gets her to believe that the cat is the cause of all the multidimensional shenanigans the world is now subject to, since he's an anime character brought to the real world.
• "End of the World" Special: Upon Neko-sensei, Aurora, and the beret returning to the anime world, the real world is remade with Minoa already being an otaku and the school having a prosperous Anime Club. However, there is a hint that Minoa still has some memories of the previous reality when she stares contemplatively at the empty window where Neko-sensei used to spend most of his time.
• Evil Is Petty: Nakano rips the seams of reality and shut down his friends' club all so he could get his name changed to something palatable. Even when he gets the director's power, nobody ever calls him anything else.
• Face–Heel Turn: Nakano turns on the club in Episode 9 by getting the advisor to accept outside funding, which gets the club shut down. While he appears to flip back to the club's side in Episode 10 by saying that the principal had him under his thumb, Episode 11 further reveals that he hails from the anime world, and is actually under the thumb of the director of the anime.
• Fan Convention: During the summer, the Anime Club goes to one in episode 5.
• Fanservice: Parodied with the Running Gag of various and oftentimes unnecessary shots of Yui's body in different and very specific angles at the start of every episode. Taken to the extreme in Episode 10, where the opening replaces nearly every sequence with the old fanservice shots of Yui.
• Fanservice Pack: Miko got this for a single episode (the onsen story), going from being a Cute Bookworm to a Hot Librarian. Upon the next episode she goes back to her primary trait.
• Fiction 500: Arisu's wealth is bottomless, buying over $300,000 worth of anime, shipped overnight, at the start of the club, and her boasting of her plans to easily buy the school just to save their club from the student council shutting it down was something she actually planned on doing had Erika not stopped her from doing so.
• Fictional Counterpart: So many, they needed their own page. This is notably dropped when the world goes back to normal in episode 12.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When the gang is waiting in line at Comiket, Beibei is hiding among the background characters a scene before she meets Minoa and Arisu.
  • Nakano actually manages to talk back to Neko-sensei at the start of episode 9, something nobody at that point besides Minoa has been able to do. One opening montage later, and the martial arts club is building a pyramid to fight on, something nobody at the school period has been able to do.
  • Nakano's reassuring words to Minoa stop echoing after a point (as in, the words repeat, but they don't have an echoing effect) in episode 9, which makes Minoa realize that her actions were justified. The very next scene we see Nakano whispering advice into Gomon-Sensei's ear, making him go along with Nakano's questionable ideas. As the end of the episode shows, these aren't linked without reason.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A couple to the world's slow animefication:
    • During Episode 1, we see Minoa go about her normal morning routine while her parents are reading the news, with one particular article having the quite abnormal topic of a working space elevator. The kind of thing that wouldn't be up and running in that day and age outside of anime.
    • Kai Kai ends up blowing up the home ec room while baking, but he was neither reprimanded for it nor was he or the girls in there hurt by the explosion, much like a harmless exaggerated fiction gag.
  • In the opening, only Minoa and Nakano have mirroring positions during the door sequence, and he's in the middle of the upperclassmen when they get focus. A secondary character like him wouldn't get that unless there was some importance to him later on. Such as, for example, hiding his status as the main antagonist.
    • The fact that both Minoa and Nakano's doors resembled the one leading into the Anime Club closet also foreshadows where Nakano came from and how Minoa opening the door led to fiction spilling out of it.
  • Also notice how Nakano gets to Minoa first for many of her pivotal moments, beginning with Episode 6. By giving her encouragement and steering her in the right direction, she's able to get back to the plot with no worries. By Episode 9, we see a more sinister version of this; he's actively making the plot go a certain way, without anyone realizing it until it's thrown in the audience's face.
  • Nakano's nonchalant reactions to everything while everyone else emotes could be chalked up to him being the cool and collected upperclassman or him being the observer to the rest of the world's animefication.
  • Nakano spouts off about wanting to blend the worlds of 2D and 3D together with little to no reaction, cluing the viewers in on both Nakano's true nature and how the world itself reacts to the changes happening to it.
• Frame Break: Happens in episode 11 when Minoa nearly walks off the frame into a black abyss due to a random aspect ratio change.
• Gender Bender: Sebas's gender (and age for that matter) got flipped when the world was altered, and no one noticed with the exception of Minoa.
• Given Name Reveal: In episode 9, Kai reveals Nakano's name is Aurora, only said after the stakes are brought up too high.
• Guilty Pleasures: Tsubaki, the student council president, isn't too keen in revealing her (way past) interest in cosplaying. Also all the interests related to the anime-theme are usually viewed as this by others students.
• Guy on Guy Is Hot:
  • Quite a bit of the female audience and Miko couldn't hold in their excitement when Nagoya helps up a eyeglass-less Kai after the latter makes his speech. According to Minoa later, a reasonable chunk of those girls voted in favor of keeping the Anime Club afloat.
  • Any time Kai and Nakano get close together, Miko gets excited.
• Heel–Face Turn: The anime-hating director of Sakaneko Academy turns a new leaf after the Anime Club manages to find the few fans that actually enjoyed his anime and gather them to cheer him on.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Miko Kouenji and Kai both pull it off while wearing glasses.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • As Minoa freaks out about the student council probably being an Absurdly Powerful Student Council, Arisu (our resident hard-core anime otaku) asks her worryingly if she's been watching too much anime.
  • In Episode 10, after Neko-senpai says the lock for the principal's office door is like the lock to his heart, Kai mentions that it sounds chunni. Neko-senpai duly notes the irony of the situation.
  • Arisu gets on Gomon-sensei's case for misusing club funds, when she repeatedly tried to do the same thing.
• Impossible Task: The Student Council increasingly puts these sorts of missions on the Anime Club, all so they could get them to shut the club down. By Episode 8, they begin to actively make the tasks more difficult by shutting off the club's contact with other clubs and forcing them to fill up a field-sized venue for their exhibit in the School Festival.
• Improbably Female Cast: By the end of the show, this is what the main cast has turned into; Sebas is now a teenage girl, Aurora doesn't exist anymore, Neko-senpai is now a purple haired Cat Girl, and Kai remains as The One Guy left in the Anime Club (as opposed to Two Guys to a Team with Aurora).
• Innocent Fanservice Girl:
  • Miko only in the onsen episode. For the whole episode she happily jumps and jiggles around Kai in skimpy outfits while dreaming of Shipping him with Kouki. Of course, for the whole time Kai thinks she is interested in him (false) but doesn't think she is trying to make him have a look at the goodies (true).
  • Miko does it sparingly even after the onsen's story, mainly around Kai or Neko-sensei.
  • On a meta level, Yui. Every episode in the beginning part, she does innocuous things while the camera makes certain to focus on her juicy bits.
• Japanese School Club: The Anime Club, naturally.
• Lampshade Hanging: Episode 11 is a 30-minute long lampshade by Minoa, who starts questioning her own sanity.
• Late for School:
  • Downplayed in episode 1. Minoa initially freaks out over being late, but ends up sitting down with her family and has a relaxed breakfast before heading out. She's also already a month into her school year, so she wasn't in a need to rush.
  • Episode 11 invokes this trope when Maaya runs late, thanks to reality rewriting its rules to match anime.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • The Anime Club decides to talk about the "Three Episode Rule" during their own Episode 3. It's also a bit of a Red Herring, as nothing remotely Wham-my happens during the episode. They save that for 6 episodes after.
  • A closeup of Minoa with highlights in her eyes is done just as the track coach wishes that would happen to him.
• Lens Flare Censor: Known and referred to in-universe in this anime as "God Rays", something Minoa discusses early on in episode 6 with her friends when she brings up the anime "Girls and Tanks" which had them. Later on, she and the rest of the club get to see an actual "God Ray" themselves while on their trip...involving a naked Kai whose manhood is conveniently censored by a ray of light. Unfortunately for the rest of the girls, they still manage to get full view of it once Gomon-sensei's light goes off. Thank goodness Sebas was there to save the day though, if only briefly. When the cast is shown bathing, the male bath is the one with the God Rays while the girls' side is shown only from chest up.
• Male Gaze: Usually averted, put played extremely straight in the onsen episode as a parody of the usual fanservice that comes with them.
• The Man Behind the Man: As much as Nakano does to merge the 2D and 3D planes, he has no real power to change anything. That belongs to the director; and while he doesn't do anything over the course of the in-universe story, it's implied that all of the happenings only occur due to his influence.
• Marshmallow Hell: Neko-Sensei gets one from Miko when they get back the Anime Club room in episode 10. Even if he's a cat he is quite pleased.
• Merged Reality: As a result of Minoa opening the club room door and letting out Neko-senpai into her world, reality itself started merging with the anime plane and resulted in anime conventions being incorporated into everyday life. Only when the anime world residents go back does the world return to normal.
• Metafiction: It's an anime about anime, so it was bound to delve into this at some points. The members even helpfully demonstrate some tropes as they discuss them. It's a bit of a slow burn, but the show starts adopting the concepts the club talks about from episode to episode to the point where episode 11 is nothing short of Troperiffic.
• Mistaken for Gay: When Kai starts developing feelings for Miko, his floundering all over himself whenever he talks about it to Nakano causes Miko to think that Kai's fallen for him instead, not that she minds. What really sealed the deal was blurting his Anguished Declaration of Love in the wrong direction.
• Montage: Episode 11 has a montage of Minoa as she attends various classes through the day. She's the only one who is aware that time is suddenly skipping.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Miko is this for a single episode, where she gets more fanservice shots than all the female characters (herself included) in the rest of the series.
  • Yui gets a fanservice shot in every episode, usually just before the opening. Taken to the extreme in Episode 10, where every sequence in the opening is a fanservice shot of her to compensate for her absence in the pre-opening scenes.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Downplayed and Parodied. In the onsen episode, Miko's plentiful chest is almost always in sight, resulting in many mixed feelings for Kai. Parodied because she not only fails to notice his eyes glued on her cleavage, but he is the one that actively tries to avert the gaze from the boobs almost slammed on his face.
• Mythology Gag:
  • At the convention, a tabler asks his coworker if Erika goes to college. Her original incarnation in Anime Gatari actually is a college student.
  • Erika thinks that Maaya is familiar when they meet, referencing their Gatari counterparts being in the Anime Club together.
  • The entire last episode is this. The series resets to its original ideas, Minoa's development profile (along with Miko and what looks to be a stand in for Arisu) is shown in full detail, and Erika goes back to her original hair color from Gatari while Miko gets red-framed glasses like she had in the prototype.
• No Fourth Wall: After the barriers between reality and fiction get thrown away, everyone gains Medium Awareness, even rewinding the episode to check the name of the series composer. Only Minoa is spared this fate, and she's understandably freaked out by it.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Minoa, while initially seems an airhead, becomes the only sane one when anime elements begin spilling into the real world. Lampshaded by Neko-Sensei later.
    "Is it all so weird that you feel like you're the only sane one?"
  • Neko-Sensei counts too, even though he isn't human.
  • Deconstructed in episode 11: Minoa is the only person who notices that the world is behaving in a way it isn't supposed to with visual effects having a visible physical presence in the world, characters art styles suddenly changing without warning and her friends and family begin acting differently to match the shift in genre. Rather than being Played for Comedy like in most other anime, she becomes terrified and breaks down crying, all while the world itself is still acting like the situation is hilarious.
• Otaku: They cover all types in this series. Miko is a Light Novel otaku, Erika is into cosplay, Nakano is a huge idol fan, and we have Minoa's father, Arisu, and the principal for anime/manga otaku.
• Plucky Girl: Minoa. Her tenacity, inability to give up, and her boundless optimism combined with a huge dosage of her innocent sweetness helped her win over the Anime Club's friendship with her. And it's not just limited to the Anime Club members either: it's shown that her entire family loves her dearly for this too and are very supportive of whatever she wants to do.
• Previously on…:
  • The eighth episode opens up with a recap of the Anime Club's short production, and the problems they're having with the final stretch.
  • The final episode includes a recap of the main events of the show since the beginning, but quickly becomes a gag recap when the narrator begins stating events that never happened. Minoa and Kouki call the narrator out on it.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: When Beibei talks to Minoa for the first time, all her Chinese is left untranslated.
• Reference Overdosed: Being a show about an anime club, anime references were bound to be plenty. See their respective Shout-Out and Lawyer-Friendly Cameo pages to look at them all.
  • Actually became a plot point and Deconstructed in episode 10: Ultra Katharsis Kortisi was filled with so many shout-outs and homages, and nothing else, that even its own director barely knew what he was referencing when the final project came out. The show was declared a mess and cancelled after a single episode.
• Rousing Speech: Conversed and invoked during episode 3. Arisu is convinced that inspiring the crowd with dramatic and emotional lines is the way to earn their favor and maintain the Anime Club. In the hands of Minoa, it doesn't do much, but Kai's on-the-fly passionate speech does get people convinced. Ultimately, it doesn't have much of an impact, and it was a combination of the speech and some well-placed male interaction that earned the main crew their club back.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Arisu always has a plan that involves copious amounts of money. For instance, bitchy student council members are bent on shutting down the anime club you and your newfound friends have put together? Buy the school so you won't have to worry about that little obstruction anymore! The Anime club has to remind her that not every problem can be solved with money.
• Serious Business: By the late series, anime as a whole becomes this to the public. Sakaneko students revere the Anime Club for giving them the specific anime their clubs/interests coalign with and modelling their behavior off of them. They even picket the principal for shutting the club down, and they're able to find a specific anime for a very specific situation and get it trending by just asking about it. It gets even worse when reality and anime start merging together; the whole school is willing to isolate Minoa at the mere thought of her not loving everything about anime, tantamount to saying she hated reality itself.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: All Nakano did to change his name was in vain; where he started out with a given name that reads "Kouji" but is pronounced Aurora, he ends the series as a fictional character in Minoa's world, concepted with no name... and he still gets Aurora (Kouji) as his name after they vote.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Matsuri and Ayame, the Student Council members who are more hindrances than true antagonists, disappear from the plot as soon as the Principal gets involved with the Anime Club.
• Shout-Out: See here.
• Spin-Offspring: Sibling variant; where Maaya was a protagonist in Gatari, her younger sister Minoa is the protagonist of this series.
• Stock Footage: You'd better like that clip of Arisu snapping her fingers for Sebas, because you're going to see it a lot.
• Strong Family Resemblance: The Asagaya sisters both got their looks and hairstyles from their mother, though Maaya got her hair color from their father.
• Stylistic Suck: The anime short the Anime Club came up with and show on episode 8 was shoddy at worst and mediocre at best, with very amateurish designs and animations and voicework of varying qualities, thanks to the unfair circumstances the student council put them in while the club was making it. It still manages to deliver its job well and got a huge applause from the crowd as a result for being a unique piece of work a bunch of amateurs came up with.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Episode 11 has the fourth wall start crumbling as anime tropes and visual effects start blending into the real world. Minoa is the only person who is aware that this shouldn't be happening and is completely terrified of the events going on around her. Her reaction is Played for Drama rather than humor as she starts becoming paranoid about her friends and family's behavior.
• Take That, Audience!: The school principal's rant to himself blames Eternal Symphony's failure on the viewers who watched it:
  "Every freaking night, they gather in the corners of the Internet, nitpicking!"
• Terrible Trio: The Student Council. They also triple as Beauty, Brains, and Brawn and Blonde, Brunette, Redhead. May even count as a cultured version of the Girl Posse.
  • Tsubaki Akabane: Student council president, and main antagonist. Also the Beauty, the Redhead, and resident Alpha Bitch.
  • Matsuri Toda: Student council treasurer, and the calm henchwoman of the leader. Also the Brains, the Blonde, and Beta Bitch.
  • Ayame Osaki: Student council vice-president, and the impulsive henchwoman of the leader. Also the Brawn, the Brunette and Brainless Beauty (Downplayed; she is just reaaaally impulsive, loud and utterly devoid of subtlety).
• Title Drop: The Anime club hosts an event called "Club Anime Talk" (Bukatsu Anime Gatari) in order to drum up viewer traffic for their self-produced short.
• Toast of Tardiness: In Episode 11, Maaya is running late for school, and catches a piece of toast from the toaster in her mouth before dashing off.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Despite most descriptions and trailers not revealing anything out of the ordinary, Crunchyroll's very first blurb for the series gives away the twist in episodes 9 and beyond:
  "In fact, Minoa and her friends are soon so obsessed with anime that they'll talk about it anywhere (in Akihabara, in "sacred sites", in the hot springs, etc.), despite the protestations of the student council and the possible imminent destruction of the world."
• 20 Minutes into the Past: Given the anime expies airing as "current" anime, the story begins during the summer of 2016 while the series itself aired in Fall 2017. Outright confirmed in episode 3. In the final episode, the gang is now in the Fall 2017 anime season, given that Minoa's mom references wanting to watch A Sister's All You Need, the adaptation that actually follows Anime-Gataris in broadcasting. The universal reset places them right back in Summer 2016.
• Visual Pun:
  • Whenever Kai does his dramatic name pose, he always ends it with an x-like arm gesture which just so happens to match up with the Greek letter χ (or chi).
  • Yui exclaims the idiom "the world for the back of your knee" while the camera focuses on exactly that of hers in episode 7.
• Weirdness Censor: Oh so very prominent.
  • The world has some regularly weird goings-on, but the club barely registers anything wrong and goof around for several episodes. They don't really start caring until the world beats one of them over the head with the weirdness.
  • Nobody sees or recognizes Neko-senpai despite not even bothering to hide himself. after a certain point in the story, nobody aside from Minoa finds it weird that they can interact with him either.
  • The club doesn't find it weird when everybody suddenly wants to incorporate anime into their daily lives, even seeing it as just another part of routine.
  • Played for drama when anime conventions start bleeding into the real world. Drastic changes are everywhere, entire personalities have been written over, and nobody but the resident Medium Aware girl knows it's happening at all.
• We Used to Be Friends: Erika and Tsubaki, who were childhood friends that got together thanks to cosplaying anime.
• Wham Episode:
  • It's a pretty standard, if a little over-the-top, school club story for the first eight episodes. Come Episode 9, everyone at the school suddenly really gets into anime and incorporates it into their school activities.
  • Episode 11: The barrier between the anime world and real world breaks down even further as Minoa becomes aware of special effects, jump cuts, and art shifts. The end of the episode reveals that Nakano comes from the anime world and is working with the director of the anime.
• Wham Shot: The end of Episode 10 shows Nakano in some pictures of the principal's high school anime club. With an era-appropriate bishie face.
• Writing Around Trademarks: All the anime references get Parody Names, such as Hero School, Previous Genesis Everstrike, Autumn Wars, Donmachi, Yuri!!! on Nice, Timbre! French Horn, Show Up Rockin', and Ore-sama Monogatari.
  • Minoa mentions Sweetness and Champion and Ange Visual in episode 5. The gang also goes to Comic Booth 90, a stand-in for Comic Market.
  • Minoa's dad mentions Akibako when talking about how tough anime production can get.

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