Nonsensical and non-sequitur based humour is incredibly difficult to pull off. Even Monty Python, the gold standard for this kind of comedy, could be incredibly hit-and-miss. But when something succeeds at it, the results can be hilarious in a surreal, subversive way; when they fail, it can end up resembling the worst kind of lolrandumb output of an internet-addled teenager.
Ai Mai Mi is, by and large, the latter.
Ostensibly, Ai Mai Mi is a series of 3 minute shorts about four girls in an after-school manga club – Ai, Mai, Mi and Ponoka – as they deal with all manner of weirdness in their day-to-day life. What we actually get is a string of incoherent and entirely disconnected skits that rely on their absurdity to get laughs instead of any actual, y’know, jokes. There’s no build up, no payoff, no characterization, no intelligence, nothing that could really be construed as comedy.
Not to say it’s entirely without merit or unwatchable – there’s a certain amount of amusement to be gleamed from its inherent strangeness, and there’s definitely a couple of genuinely hilarious moments – it’s just that Ai Mai Mi is more mildly confusing than actually funny.
Nice ED though.
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