After School in the Teacher's Lounge
Reviewer:Wiggle [website] [email]Overall Rating: C
Media Reviewed: Digital Fansub
Creator: Koide Mieko (artist), Koshaka Rito (author)
U.S. Licensed: No
Released by: BeXBoy
Run time: 60 minutes
BL Content: Soft (emotions, kissing)
Genre: Drama/Romance
Other media: Japanese manga (unlicensed)
The least disappointing thing about After School in the Teacher's Lounge, an OVA series of two 30-minute episodes, is that there is no teacher's lounge. Despite the title, the OVA never shows just what goes on after school in the teacher's lounge. The most disappointing thing about these mini-movies is the lack of story and interest that they generate.
The plot is simple and predictable, and can be gleaned from the title alone. Two male teachers meet at school, and through a series of up-and-down circumstances that we see in almost every boy's love story, manage to get together as a couple. Tentative kisses, a pushy seme, an uke lacking in self-esteem, rejection, misunderstandings, assumptions and the token female false love interest fill in the very loose storyline. The only thing that sets this apart from Lesson XX or Our Road of No Return is that the men in Teacher's Lounge are adults, not teenagers. Kazama Toshiaki is our dark-haired, dark-skinned seme, pursuing Kawase Mitsuro, the smaller, lighter presumed uke. Kazama is pushy and insistent, while Kawase is shy and retreating, just as you'd expect from any typical boy's love couple.
Episode one of Teacher's Lounge suffers from not only a somewhat boring story, but also dull, featureless character designs and awkward animation. The colors in the first episode are flat, and the characters look like faint copies of the main characters from Level-C without the interesting hair and sparkly facial expressions. The second episode, luckily, seems to have been made some time after the first, and looks much better. More detail is put into the characters' hair and eyes, making them feel more real and modern.
Also in the second episode, the plot tackles something slightly more interesting and adult: what does a gay couple do when one of them is expected to marry and have children? Kazama is set up with a blind date whom he continues to see because his boss, the principal of the school, wants to see him dating a woman. This upsets Kawase so much that he almost commits suicide, and then decides to break up with Kazama. How the couple deals with this rocky part of their relationship is the only really interesting thing that happens during the OAVs.
For seiyuu fans, however, there is a treat: Kawase is played by Midorikawa Hikaru, the prolific seiyuu also known as Schuldig from Weiss Kreuz, Tamahome from Fushigi Yugi and Heero from Gundam Wing. Kazama's role is played by Yanada Kiyoyuki, who I was surprised to find also played Gateau in Bakuretsu Hunters as well as Shuten Douji from Yoroiden Samurai Troopers.
After School in the Teacher's Lounge was sort of a collector's item for me, since it was one of the few boy's love animations that I hadn't seen. Aside from that, there wasn't much that made this anime stand out from others just like it.