History Manga / AsobiAsobase

Kasumi Nomura is a straight-laced girl who has grown up hating games thanks to her older sister always beating her at them. When she sees the foreign transfer student Olivia playing a silly game with the energetic and wealthy Hanako Honda, Kasumi sees her chance to improve her terrible English grades: in exchange for teaching Olivia how Japanese people have fun, Olivia agrees to teach Kasumi English. Little does Kasumi know that Olivia was actually born and raised in Japan by foreign parents and doesn't know a word of English. Thus is the Pastimers Club formed, dedicated to playing games and having fun.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: When Hanako presents her poster design for the club's upcoming film, Kasumi suggests she add an announcement for season 2 of the anime. Hanako promptly shoots it down however, since the first one hasn't even ended yet, therefore there is no season 2 to announce.

* TrainingMontage: Hanako trains a stag beetle to help break into the Student Council office with a montage of lifting weights, drinking egg yolks, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers learning basic arithmetic]].

* SeriousBusiness: Kasumi treats any type of game as this, much to the other Pastimers' terror.
* SickeningCrunch: Happens everytime Kasumi demonstrates her AbnormalLimbRotationRange to no ill effects.

While the series keeps an aesthetic of "cute girls doing cute things", it showcases absurdist comedy often featuring Kasumi, Olivia, and Hanako being jerks to each other and everyone they encounter, their classmates and teachers being just as neurotic, and lots and lots of butt jokes. The series received an anime adaptation by Lerche which began airing on July 8, 2018 and is currently available for streaming on Website/{{Crunchyroll}}.

* BaitAndSwitchCredits: The opening, "Three-Piece", is a cute and fluffy song with visuals of the three protagonists in white sundresses with [[YuriGenre copious lilies everywhere]], suggesting that it's an easygoing slice-of-life series. In actuality, the series is an absurdist comedy featuring the girls being moronic jerks to each other and everyone else. The ending, "Inkya Impulse", which is a heavy metal song featuring surreal neon scribbles of the girls while Hanako screams about popular girls, is more in line with the series' true premise.

* LoopholeAbuse:
** Olivia uses the school's swing set to give herself a massive momentum boost during the shoe launch match against the Shogi Club. They can't disqualify her since nobody said anything about using swings. The Shogi Club President later tries to one-up her by riding a bicycle and actually ''wins''. However, [[GoneHorriblyRight the resulting inertia causes her to painfully crash onto the yard and getting severely injured]], causing her victory to become pointless.

[[caption-width-right:234:From left to right: Kasumi, Hanako and Olivia]]

While the series keeps an aesthetic of "cute girls doing cute things", it showcases absurdist comedy often featuring Kasumi, Olivia, and Hanako being jerks to each other and everyone they encounter, their classmates and teachers being just as neurotic, and lots and lots of butt jokes. The series received an anime adaptation by Lerche which began airing on July 8, 2018 and is currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

Kasumi Nomura is a straight-laced girl who has grown up hating games thanks to her older sister always beating her at them. When she sees the foreign transfer student Olivia playing a silly game with the energetic and wealthy Hanako Honda, Kasumi sees her chance to improve her terrible English grades: in exchange for teaching Olivia how Japanese people have fun, Olivia agrees to teach Kasumi English. Little does Kasumi know that Olivia was actually born and raised in Japan by foreign parents and doesn't know a word of English! Thus is the Pastimers Club formed, dedicated to playing games and having fun!

''Asobi Asobase - workshop of fun -'' is a send-up of {{Moe}} SchoolgirlSeries written by Rin Suzukawa and originally published on Hakusensha's ''Young Animal Densi'' website starting in June 2015 before being moved to their ''Manga Park'' website in August 2017. While it keeps an aesthetic of "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" shows, it showcases absurdist comedy often featuring the three protagonists Kasumi, Olivia and Hanako being jerks to each other and everyone they encounter, their classmates and teachers being just as neurotic, and lots and lots of butt jokes. The series received an anime adaptation by Lerche which began airing on July 8, 2018 and is currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

* AbnormalLimbRotationRange: Kasumi seems capable of bending her body in absurd ways, like bending her thumb completely backward in a game of thumb war.
--> '''Hanako:''' "She's doing her Chinese contortionist shit again"
* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: Maeda is Hanako's butler and not her father, but Hanako is still embarrassed by his ExtremeDoormat tendencies and his butt laser. Amusingly, Hanako adored Maeda's butt lasers up until about a week before Episode 4.

* AwesomenessByAnalysis: Kasumi attempts this in her and Olivia's match against the Soft Tennis club by using her math skills to calculate the trajectory of the ball... but she's not athletic enough to actually hit the ball.
* BaitAndSwitchCredits: The opening, "Three-Piece", is a cute and fluffy song with visuals of the three protagonists in white sundresses with [[YuriGenre copious lilies everywhere]], suggesting that it's an easygoing slice-of-life show, but the show itself is an absurdist comedy featuring the girls being moronic jerks to each other and everyone else. The ending, "Inkya Impulse", which is a heavy metal song featuring surreal neon scribbles of the girls while Hanako screams about popular girls, is more in line with the show's true tone.
* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: The Shogi Club President agrees to settle who gets to use the classroom by challenging the Pastimers Club to a game, namely shoe kicking. Furthermore, when Olivia bends the rules by using a swing to kick her shoe, the Shogi Club President goes one further by riding a bike down a hill and jumping off. [[GoneHorriblyRight She wins by a landslide, but she also breaks several bones in the resulting fall]] and the Shogi club decides to meet at the president's house while she recovers, letting the Pastimers keep the room.
* BitchInSheepsClothing: The Student Council President, who looks meek and timid but often says incredibly rude and abrasive things, possibly accidentally.
* BlessedWithSuck: Maeda's butt lasers made him unable to keep a job thanks to him destroying his employers' toilets every time he used the bathroom. Even after Hanako's grandfather taught him how to control his butt, he still breaks the Honda household's toilets whenever he has diarrhea.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: When Olivia confesses to Kasumi that she doesn't know English and asks if she still wants to hang out with her, Kasumi gives a heartfelt yes, affirming their friendship and sharing a hug. When Olivia asks Hanako the same question...

* ChristmasCake: Chisato can ''hear'' her biological clock ticking and is absolutely desperate to get married, to the point where her ringtone is a wedding song.
* {{Chuunibyou}}: Oka's fellow Supernatural Club member Aguri, aka "Agrippa", who, aside from her fake name talks about completing the Fifth Pentacle of the Sun and tells Oka that if she disappears suddenly, she probably used it to teleport.
* DarkIsNotEvil: Oka, the sole remaining member of the school's Supernatural Club, is definitely creepy and into playing terrifying games, but she just wants to talk about the occult with people and is incredibly distraught when she learns that her former club member was in the hospital.
* DCupDistress: Kasumi laments that her large chest prevents her from buying the clothes that she wants, either because they don't come in their size or because any logos on them become stretched to ridiculous proportions. Hanako, meanwhile, [[ACupAngst wishes that she could have those problems.]]
* DerangedAnimation: Oh so very much! Hanako in particular [[NightmareFace enters this mode when she's angry or otherwise upset]], which is to say most of the time.

* HiddenDepths:
** Hanako, despite her GenkiGirl personality, is actually the smartest of the group, as well as being rich and athletic. It's implied that the only thing keeping her from the popular girl she wants to be is her own erratic personality.
** The Lord of Pastimers, despite looking and acting like a trashy ganguro girl, actually made the top 100 in the national mock school entrance exam, is better at games than the Pastimers and is a lot nicer than them to boot, letting Hanako use her cleanser after Kasumi and Olivia do a disastrous makeup job on her.

** Olivia uses the school's swing set to give herself a massive momentum boost during the shoe launch match against the Shogi club. They can't disqualify her since nobody said anything about using swings. The Shogi club president later tries to one-up her by riding a bicycle and actually ''wins'', however [[GoneHorriblyRight the resulting inertia causes her to painfully crash onto the yard and getting severely injured]], causing her victory to become pointless.

** In her latest bid to become popular, Hanako asks Olivia to apply makeup on her (despite Olivia knowing nothing about it). In her first attempt she uses way too much eyeshadow and makes Hanako look like she got punched; in her second attempt, trying to emulate the Lord of Pastimers, Hanako ends up looking like the Joker.

** Olivia and Hanako have this reaction when Olivia goes to slap Kasumi after Rock-Paper-Scissors and accidentally slaps her boobs (Olivia could get away with it against Hanako because in Hanako's case there was nothing but air there.)
** In Episode 7 when Hanako accidentally calls Kasumi weird after trying to deny reading her perverted fanfiction, they ''both'' have this reaction.
* PetTheDog: The Pastimers are in tears when Oka tells them about Agrippa and are determined to help her get better. When Oka confesses that she doesn't think her magic will actually do anything, Olivia tells her that she shouldn't start being rational ''now'' and convinces her to try healing her with magic.
* PrecisionFStrike: Maeda made an android based on Olivia to represent her in an English-speaking contest, however its programmed vocabulary is mostly comprised of the dirty slang that Hanako's grandfather speaks. This [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar gets past the radar]] in the anime due to the fact that the wrong words in her lines got censored. (E.g. They censored the "up" in "Shut the f*ck up!")
* RealityEnsues: The Student Council President rejects the Pastimer Club's bid to be a club (with its 10,000 yen in club funds) because they only have three people and because "having fun" is something that they can do at home. They manage to at least qualify as a circle by ensnaring Chisato into their club.
* ReallyGetsAround: The "Lord of Pastimers" got her name because she slept with most of the boys from a nearby all-boys school.[[note]]Chisato's friend Andou mistakes "Pastimers" for "Pleasure Seekers" when introducing her[[/note]]

* TooDumbToLive:
** The "Senpai" in one of Kasumi's yaoi reading materials in episode 8 whips out a roll of super sticky tapes to bind his romantic partner. He then licks said tape and gets his tongue stuck on the roll.
* TrainingMontage: Hanako trains a stag beetle to help break into the Student Council office with a montage of lifting weights, drinking egg yolks, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers learning basic arithmetic]].
* UndyingLoyalty: Maeda is extremely loyal to the Honda family thanks to Hanako's grandfather teaching him how to control his butt lasers. He even offers to go to Nichome[[note]]A famous gay district in Tokyo[[/note]] with Vaseline for Hanako's sake.
* YaoiFangirl: In Episode 4, Hanako and Olivia discover Kasumi writing smutty Harry Potter fanfiction, to her extreme embarrassment. Chisato then timidly asks Kasumi to let her read it when she's finished.

** In Episode 7 when Hanako accidentally calls Kasumi weird after trying to deny not reading her perverted fanfiction, they ''both'' have this reaction.

* OhCrap: Olivia and Hanako have this reaction when Olivia goes to slap Kasumi after Rock-Paper-Scissors and accidentally slaps her boobs (Olivia could get away with it against Hanako because in Hanako's case there was nothing but air there.)

** Olivia uses the school's swing set to give herself a massive momentum boost during the shoe launch match against the Shogi club. They can't disqualify her since nobody said anything about using swings. The Shogi club president later tries to one-up her by riding a bicycle and actually ''wins'', however [[GoneHorriblyRight the resulting inertia causes her to painfully crash onto the yard and severely maims her]].

* DerangedAnimation: Oh so very much! Hanako in particular [[Nightmare Face enters this mode when she's angry or otherwise upset]], which is to say most of the time.

''Asobi Asobase - workshop of fun -'' is a parody of {{Moe}} SchoolgirlSeries written by Rin Suzukawa and originally published on Hakusensha's ''Young Animal Densi'' website starting in June 2015 before being moved to their ''Manga Park'' website in August 2017. While it keeps an aesthetic of "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" shows, it showcases absurdist comedy often featuring the three protagonists Kasumi, Olivia and Hanako being jerks to each other and everyone they encounter, their classmates and teachers being just as neurotic, and lots and lots of butt jokes. The series received an anime adaptation by Lerche which began airing on July 8, 2018 and is currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

** The Lord of Pastimers, despite looking and acting like a trashy ganguro girl, actually made the top 100 in the national mock school entrance exam, is better at games than the Pastimers and is a lot nicer, letting Hanako use her cleanser after Kasumi and Olivia do a disastrous makeup job on her.

* YaoiFangirl: In Episode 4, the Hanako and Olivia discover Kasumi writing smutty Harry Potter fanfiction, to her extreme embarrassment. Chisato then timidly asks Kasumi to let her read it when she's finished.

* HiddenDepths: Hanako, despite her GenkiGirl personality, is actually the smartest of the group, as well as being rich and athletic. It's implied that the only thing keeping her from the popular girl she wants to be is her own erratic personality.