Dasi Gantung (translates to 'Hanging Tie') is an Indonesian comedy web animation series (Granted, it's just the channel's name, but it has been adopted as its official name). The animation can look a little too minimalist, but the series shines in its bizarre comedy presentation.
The plot is basically a mere Slice of Life of the students of "SMA Margasatwa" ("Wildlife High School") where the students are considered bizarre and wild like animals in the forest. It stars Serena, a high school girl who's an impulsive, short-tempered, crazy (with even crazier parents) bully that absolutely gives no fucks to anything. Even occasional ghosts; she's a little paranormal in which she can sense ghosts, but she continuously bullies the local ghosts if they piss her off. Generally, Serena is pretty much an Anti-Hero, not a model student, but she carries an amusingly crazy life surrounded with various crazy people, while also touching on several cliches relate to Indonesian high school life and culture. Hilarity Ensues every day.
There are several recurring cast members, the most common are Serena's two friends Monika and Raki, both of them might look like the sane man that sometimes reels in Serena's crazy attitude, but they are Not So Above It All, sometimes they dip into their own brand of crazies.
You can watch Dasi Gantung and Serena here
, but so far only if you know Bahasa Indonesia, there's no English subtitles available or planned.
Tropes associated with this series
- Accidental Misnaming: The female teacher has a bad habit to read her students' names wrong. Poor Vany ends up being called 'Panu' (a type of dirty skin symptoms due to unhygienic lifestyle)
- Anti-Hero: Serena. She's impulsive, loud-mouthed and tends to bully others, has a bizarre amoral solution for a lot of things and she's the protagonist of the series. Definitely not the kind of 'model student' you're looking for.
- Barrier Maiden: It's implied that Serena's raging jerkass attitude is what kept the school at bay from being completely haunted by ghosts or other supernatural beings, because Serena (when she's a jerk) is the only one who can and had the balls to make these ghosts wimp out. Which is why the school panics if Serena would stop being a jerk.
- Break Them by Talking: For interrupting her singing training session, Serena gave a kuntilanak a kick to the face and utterly ridicules her attempt to scare people to be low-class that the kuntilanak is driven to tears and run off crying.
- Hilarity Ensues: The specialty of this skit. To today's animation standards or even compared with some Indonesian web-animations, this series' animation can get a little minimalistic, but this trope pretty much makes up for it. Every skit will contain something that makes you laugh.
- Horrifying the Horror: There are many many ghosts that can haunt normal humans. Not Serena. Any ghosts encountering her are in for either a mouthful or physical violence.
- No, You: This exchange:Female teacher: Ini kok nama kalian unik-unik semua ya? (All of your names are pretty unique, huh?)
Serena: Matamu, bu, yang unik... (Your eyes are the unique ones, ma'am...) [she gets a Death Glare by the teacher and then tries to play innocent] - Non-Indicative Name: There is no mention about hanging ties (the translation of the channel title 'Dasi Gantung') within this series nor does it play a significant part (Every students in school wears hanging ties as part of their school uniform, but it's treated like an everyday occurrence not worth pointing out).
- Not So Above It All: Sometimes, Monika and Raki try to play as the Only Sane Man in some skits, but they quickly prove themselves to be just as crazy or quirky like Serena.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: While Serena comes off as a violent girl that looks like she will be a poor grader... turns out she is a pretty smart girl that can also top her grades. Too bad her mother has Skewed Priorities and she still has some weak spots, especially when foreigners are involved.
- Skewed Priorities: Serena got berated by her mother despite being a top grader... merely because her grades are written with black ink, she'd rather have variety of colors like red and others aside of black.
- Slice of Life: It's just a typical daily lives in school... a particularly chaotic school full of quirky students, some crazy, where hilarious shenanigans are bound to happen every day.
- Verbal Tic: Expect a lot of sentences to be interjected with 'bah' by anyone. Not as an annoyed expression (like "Bah, humbug."), but more like a friendly interjection just to signify the casual air of the conversation, a bit more like 'Yo'.
- The Voiceless: Aside of some early episodes (especially after the Accidental Misnaming episodes, which were some of the first), a lot of the characters tends to not speak at all (mostly students that aren't Serena, Monika and Raki). However, their body language and actions tend to speak of their personality. Two standout examples are Paramitha and Vany, they are the pseudo-recurring characters aside of the main trio and the teachers (and the ghosts), but they don't speak at all, only using body languages and actions to convey their personality.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: At one point, Serena had to play off as a Nice Girl as part of a Truth or Dare game. She pulls it off so well that everyone in the school feels that something is off and work their ass off to make sure Serena goes back into her impulsive self again.
