The title screen.
Oh, no, I'm late for school again!
There's no time to eat my toast!
I met a cute boy
Light Chocolate Life Love
There's no time to eat my toast!
I met a cute boy
Light Chocolate Life Love
Senpai Club is a four episode Fanime series created by the Swedish duo makebabi.es
(Olivia Bergström and Eric Bradford). It is an Affectionate Parody of anime tropes, specifically those found in the shojo genre.
15-year-old Tsumiki Domen is your everyday pink-haired Ordinary High-School Student. In her rush to get to class on time on her first day of high school, Tsumiki bumps into a handsome boy known as Hero-Senpai. Feeling guilty about the encounter, Tsumiki later goes looking for him to apologize and ends up stumbling upon the Senpai Club, a club full of handsome and charming men (and one woman). However, the club members have no interest in attracting the attention of women, instead having created the club to learn about how to avoid women. Hero-Senpai, though, just can't help but feel an instant attraction towards Tsumiki.
Episodes of Senpai Club can be found on makebabi.es's YouTube channel.
Senpai Club provides examples of:
- Advertised Extra: Rock-and-Roll Senpai. He shows up prominently in the opening, but barely gets two words into his introduction before being interrupted by Bowlcut Senpai.
- Aerith and Bob: Seeing as the series takes place in Japan, everybody has a Japanese-sounding name. And then there's Nelly Smith. Justified though, as she's from America.
- Affectionate Parody: Of the Shōjo Demographic. It also becomes clear in the subsequent episodes that the series is one to Anime in general.
- All Just a Dream: The second episode's opening was this for Tsumiki, as she stood talking with Bowlcut-senpai.
- Anime Accent Absence: Averted with Nelly Smith, a half-Japanese half-American girl who moved to Japan just last year. Her control of the language seems fine, but her accent is uh, noticeable, to say the least.
- Art Shift: Episode 3 is animated in a manner reminiscent of a Rumiko Takahashi work; the reason for this being that something went wrong with the current animation so they have to air "the original '80s anime."
- Babies Ever After: At the very least, the "80s version" reveals that Tsumiki and Hero have a child four years after the main story.
- Beach Episode: The last episode takes place on their school trip, and has them on the beach for some of it.
- But Not Too Foreign: Nelly Smith, who was raised in America but has a Japanese mother
- Cherry Blossoms: ALL OVER on the way to school. Also appears during the OP.
- Christmas Episode: This particular one features Kurokawa and Teacher-sensei going on a date together before ending with Kurokawa kissing her.
- Clip-Art Animation: The "next time on" segment.
- Conveniently Seated: Near the window, of course.
- Crash-Into Hello: How Tsumiki meets Hero-senpai.
- Dead Guy Junior: In the Five Years Later episode, Hero-senpai and Tsumiki's child is revealed to be named "Frederico" after Rock 'n' Roll-Senpai's real name
- Department of Redundancy Department: Teacher-Sensei (and since the voice acting is in Japanese, she's referred to as Sensei-Sensei)
- Dream Intro: Episode 2 does this.
- Establishing Character Moment: "My name is Tsumiki Domen. I'm 15 years old. My birthday is February 14! Beef bowls are my favorite food, and my blood type is A!"
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The ending for Episode 1 is clearly sung by the voice actor for Bowlcut-senpai, while he joins Hero-senpai for the second ending theme.
- Faceless Masses: In episode 2, all of the other students are simply identified as either being a boy or a girl by being pink or blue.
- Fanime
- Funny Foreigner: Nelly Smith, an American who wears star spangled socks, eats McDonald's-esque food, and speaks with a strong Southern drawl.
- Fun with Subtitles:
- The first two words of the theme song are clearly swearwords (kuso meaning "shit" and fakku being a Japanese pronunciation of "fuck"), but the subtitles never translate them as such and always go for something more tame (like "Oh no").
- Tsumiki saying Baka over and over in the first episode is subtitled as an extremely long, verbose paragraph.
- Gratuitous English: Mainly Nelly uses this.
- Gratuitous French: The credits song for the third episode, "Don't Graduate, Senpai!", makes use of the French word "Aventure"TR. in between its Japanese and gratuitous English.
- Gratuitous German: From Lady-Senpai.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Inexplicably, "Corazón"TR. is used in the opening alongside English and Japanese lyrics.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: "LIGHT CHOCOLATE LOVE LIFE" (subbed 3 times at once)
- In the Style of:
- Episode 1 is done in the style of a typical early-mid 2000's anime.
- Episode 2 looks like it was made by Studio Shaft, complete with head-tilt.
- Episode 3 (due to technical limitations) resembles a Takahashi-esque '80s anime.
- Late for School: The opening scene of the first episode, complete with anime toast.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Kurokawa's behavior towards Teacher-Sensei is rather inappropriate, though it's all played for laughs.
- Love Bubbles
- Morning Routine: Episode 1 begins with this.
- No Name Given: The Senpais are only referred to as their titles (Hero-Senpai, Bowl Cut-Senpai, Lady-Senpai, etc.)
- Ojou: Lady-Senpai presents herself in this way. Though the subtitles translate her name as "Lady-Senpai", her name is actually "Ojou-Senpai" in Japanese.
- Once an Episode: The opening and ending credits and whoever sings them changes depending on the episode.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: All of the senpais.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Everyone, give or take a measure of ordinary. Though the most ordinary out of all of them seems to be Tsumiki.
- Public Service Announcement: In the background of the first episode, you can see a poster saying "DO!! NOT DRUGS"
- Retraux: The third episode is done in the style of anime made in The '80s, the In-Universe reason being that this particular episode is from the 1980s adaptation of Senpai Club.
- Sailor Fuku: The uniforms the girls use, as per anime cliche.
- Setting Update: Based on what was revealed in episode 3, the current show updates the series to be in The New '10s.
- Stylistic Suck: The art style of the Senpais. It parodies infamous yaoi anatomy on the guys (especially flat, pointy chins, ala Dorito Faced Bad Touch Sempai San and Shota Boy), although the girls are animated much more professionally.
- Shout-Out:
- The girls wear Sailor Moon style school uniforms.
- Episode 2 features Studio Shaft's signature head tilt.
- Super-Deformed: Used every once in a while, particularly during the On the Next segments.
- The Smurfette Principle: Lady-Senpai appears to be the only female Senpai in the club.
- Retroactive Legacy: The series is apparently old enough to have had an Animated Adaptation in the mid 80s. We only see "the equivalent" episode to the modern episode 3 to fill in for the modern adaptation's broken disc.
- V-Sign: In the opening.
- Woolseyism: The subtitles for episode 3 have a more liberal take on the opening and ending themes, instead matching the beat of the song. Invoked, as it matches real life 80's subtitling.
