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Satania secretly wishes she was part of the picture |
Comedic slice of lifes are some of the easiest shows to grade. If the humour works it’s fantastic, while if the jokes fall flat it’s typically bad. Yeah there’s some give and take, but you more or less know immediately whether the show is for you. Thankfully Gabriel Dropout was one of the success stories for me, a hilarious comedy that did just enough to make me forget it was actually Monday.
Part of Gabriel Dropout’s appeal lies in its execution. The show possessed few notable faults, sticking mostly to a weekly two skit script and varying the featured characters to limit potential boredom. After watching Gabriel use and abuse her privileges with poor Vigne for example, attention could turn to resident dunce demon Satania and her melon bread struggles. This strategy ensured new experiences and fresh humour, key components needed in any successful comedy. While yielding a good deal of laughs, the show was not without its weaknesses, however; some of the skits did fall flat (i.e. the mock interview), while others felt drawn out and forced at times. Personally I found the best jokes—well, the majority of them—occurred within the show’s first half, especially those involving Satania’s ridiculous attempts at besting Gabriel.
The humour was particularly strong though when it made good use of each character’s personal intricacies. Both cooking skits hilariously worked because they accentuated Gabriel’s slothfulness, while Raphiel humorously acted best when openly manipulating her fellow cast (I’m looking at you Tapris and Satania). Vigne too yielded some side aching skits, particularly her attempt at performing demonic deeds which had me in tears from start to finish. It was the ridiculous personality differences that made these jokes work, especially when primed by the flipped nature of angel and demon. Swapping traits is nothing new in anime—just look at the trap trope—but it becomes deliciously funny watching a demon openly struggle not to write class notes and an angel getting off to the hair-brained failures of a certified doofus. At least the poor coffee master maintained a sense of dignity from start to finish. Well, some of the time.
Although Gabriel Dropout may not have arguably been as good as season companion Konosuba, there’s no denying it was a fun little show never failing to entertain. While I personally thought Gab’s NEET-ness was underutilized at times, considering the humour we received I cannot complain too much. These shows are first and foremost about mental relaxation, so long as you enjoy the experience it can be considered a rousing success. Given Gabriel Dropout amused me plenty from start to finish, I have no regrets for the time I spent watching this one. If we ever receive more faillen angel in the future, I’ll definitely be back, guaranteed.
gabriel dropout totally exceeded my expectations. at first i only watched the this anime just to fill my weekly watchlist (i hate having a day without a title to watch per season) but as i watched gabriel dropout, i find myself waiting for it to air every monday.
as to “comparison” with konosuba, IMO, gabriel dropout indeed may not be on par with konosuba when it comes to most things (i mean c’mon konosuba has story plot gabriel dropout doesnt have one YET) but i can say that it is on par (probably even better) with konosuba S2 (if compared with S1 then its only a par) when it comes to the quirks and laughs and how effective it is. (i will not elaborate since its my own humble opinion anyway)
Oh agreed the comparison potential is limited, but I was looking more at the comedy than story. Personally I felt Konosuba had more humorous moments–especially the first season–but that might be because of Konosuba’s ridiculous character cast and voice acting more than any inherent advantage. For a SoL, Gabriel Dropout did everything right it had to, cannot ask for more than that.
great anime moe moe culter
I liked GabDrop more than Konosuba S2, actually. Konosuba S1 was great but IMO the humor wasn’t as good this time around. GabDrop, on the other hand, was a blast from start to finish and I looked forward to it every week. All the characters, even the side characters, had great chemistry with each other and made the whole thing so much fun.
Vigne best girl!
vigne is indeed the best girl for keeping up with gabriel’s split persona of perfect angel and faillen angel, being able to tolerate raphiel’s “sadistic” behavior and staying as the straight man (tsukkomi) against satania’s fail demonic antics (boke) most of all staying sane despite all this three around her.
Vigne was too pure for this world, although at least Master understood her travails 😛
God now I’m laughing again thinking about them brainstorming the evil deeds.
I love all the characters, especially Satania. Without her, the anime wouldn’t be this funny.
Easily, Satania was so lovably stupid it was hard not adoring her. She was also necessary to give Raphiel something to chew on, which arguably made Raphiel work as well as she did.
I’m having a hard time remembering a show that made me laugh out loud as much as this did. I’m really going to miss it being part of my Monday evenings.
So long as Spring has a comedy or two working as well as Gabriel, I can live with this one ending 😛
One Gabriel~
Two Gabriel~
Three Gabriel~
Ga~briel~ ga ichi~
I really don’t want to nitpick, but I’d like to add that when you are counting people in Japanese, you use the hitori/futari/sannin (一人/二人/三人) etc. forms of the numbers, so correctly it is “Ga~briel~ ga hitori~”
BTW, it was a really good lullaby, I’d recommend to anyone who have sleep problems.
The silver haired girl made me drop this show 3 or 4 episodes in. It was fun otherwise, but I hated that troll.
I only watched this anime because “Gabriel” was in the name!
Man, Gabriel Dropout made a big impression on me as a comedy show. It was a toss up between Gabriel and KonoSuba S2 this season as to which one as funnier. I also enjoyed the fact that this series was quite faithful to the original manga. Always a big plus in my book. Well, Gabriel Dropout is queued up on my “Anime Bluray Purchase List”. Just need to wait on a NA licensor…
I dropped this show after 4 or 5 episodes. I love Konosuba, Kobayashi, and Demi-girls but this show just was not that funny.
I’m pretty much with this guy. It was good; for some seasons, it would have been the best comedy in show. But in a season with so many other, better comedy shows…
Although I personally loved this, I can understand why. It’s the type of humour which you either adore, or have to be in the right mood for. Then there’s the competition angle as Guile mentions which definitely had some effect here.
Another good series that is short but funny is Nobunaga no Shinobi.
This anime is weird, it’s a solid comedy anime, about 7/10 maybe 6.5/10 with a decent cast of characters. It looks like a mo~e comedy but somehow it’s just a comedy, which is fine; I just find it weird because several friends of mine who skip top-tier mo~e comedies regularly picked this one up and loved it, like 10/10 loved it.
Then again, I’m the kind of person who likes this kind of show when everything is in 100% excess. This show kind of just came out to be a time-sink, it was entertaining enough, but man; are these characters one-note and boring throughout most of the show, lol.
Gabriel wasn’t slovenly enough and kind of just served to shoot off one-liners about destroying humanity, like a more boring Tooru from Kobayashi-san.
Vigne was her archetype and barely anything else worth noting.
Satania was adorable, but considering she was the only actual mo~e character in the show she kind of just felt too high-energy and most people I know found her to be annoying.
Really, the only character who was above average was Raphiel; and every single gag she was in was pretty much exactly the same with minor variants, lol.
It’s similar to Konosuba in that it gives you a cast of characters with familiar personalities and puts them in situations that allow for those personalities to shine through, but it just wasn’t anywhere near as endearing. It’s comedy/manzai-lite to the fullest degree, a solid time sink; but ultimately forgettable.
Then once a better show like it comes out, people can go back to not watching this kind of show again, lol.
I couldn’t sit through more than a couple episodes of this. Seeing Satania get the short end of the stick all the time didn’t feel good to me. I understand comedy from misfortune (Konosuba does it great), but getting it from half of the main cast bullying her just isn’t… egh. I just felt too bad for Satania to laugh at anything.
@Nitro: Had the same issue when I “test drove” the manga prior to the start of the season. Also why I dropped the anime as well. Didn’t find it funny. All it did was make me feel sorry for Satania and increasingly dislike Raphiel. Far as I’m concerned you could drop Raphiel altogether from the series. JMO *prepares to dodge rocks*
While I didn’t find the anime or manga (of what I watched/read) as funny as Kobayashi-san or KonaSuba, this was good enough to where I’d probably watch the anime if not for the above issue.
I totally get what you mean, but I would say give the show a second chance. I don’t like comedies that bully a certain character to oblivion. Like I’m all for friends throwing each other under the bus, but there has to be limits. They still have to be actual friends at the end of the day and not treat each other like shit, otherwise the humor just seems bad-natured and it’s not fun. Thankfully I feel like in the second half, the cast doesn’t bully Satania that badly. Vigne is always nice to her (almost), and even Gabriel grows a soft spot for her and treats her nicely, although once. Raphiel on the other hand picks on her, but I think overall the bullying kinda dies down. For me personally, the show was just “meh” in the start, but I was loving it by the last few episodes.
Quite literally a copy of already existing anime, like so many comedies from this decade are. Hayate really made it hard for anime to show something new, but the “beautiful neet” trope in particular is terribly overused. I haven’t seen a typical comedy anime in 10 years, and I’m still not going to. I’d rather rewatch Azumanga or School Rumble.