How would you rate episode 6 of
Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! ?
Toilet humor is funny. I am 38 years old, and I no longer need to adhere to the pretense of only giving the highest brow of humor a light chuckle. In truth, I think it's hilarious that Hisako, Komaro, and Arisu all go to the bathroom at the same time and each find themselves stuck in their stalls for uniquely embarrassing reasons. It's a good kind of absurd that lends to the character-based comedy. Komaro's horrible luck grants her the short end of the proverbial stick with her broken bidet, Arisu's cool demeanor evaporates with the toilet paper that was supposed to be in her stall, and Hisako's determination makes her try her darndest to come up with a solution. While there's cheekiness involved in the setup, the execution doesn't feel raunchy until Hisako finds her rear end hanging helplessly out the window for everyone—namely the boys—to see, with the anime rendering the fabric of her panties in excruciating detail. This is what I've come to expect from Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! : solid comedy with impressive animation peppered with perversion.
On that note, it's interesting to look at how the show sexualizes its lone adult main character, Satomi, compared to the rest of the cast. Ume's visit to her apartment lets the camera linger on her various states of undress, including loose-fitting clothing (with impeccably rendered folds and wrinkles), exposed bra straps, and eventually complete nudity. While her drunken attempts at hitting on Ume are clearly not okay, the anime presents her to the audience in a different and more “adult” manner compared to the rest of the cast. Even the unedited version of the episode censors her fully exposed state, implying that it is “realer” than the previous examples of nudity. While that may be a quirk of Japan's censorship laws, it still supports the separation of Sensei from her students.
The other lewd sketch of note sees Hisako attempt to find out if Ume could actually see her panties during the window mishap. It begins with her applying her honor student know-how and student council president determination to the problem, and it ends with her turning herself on so much that she doesn't finish studying. While it's tempting to read this as nothing but further titillation for the audience, doing so ignores an uncommonly frank portrait of female sexuality. Hisako finds out that she likes how she looks, and that she likes thinking about Ume looking at her in that way. There's a certain power in recognizing and controlling that in one's own fantasies, and I'd go as far as to say it's good to find yourself attractive and to find ways to remind yourself of that. In between the jokes, I'm impressed that the series gives Hisako this much interiority as her own person with her own sexuality.
In a more maudlin sense, the show also gives Komaro a degree of interiority. At Satomi's apartment, Ume learns that Komaro lost her parents a long time ago and lives more or less independently with some assistance from Satomi. Expanding on this idea, the post-credits scene takes us into Komaro's POV on an average day. There's a sense of melancholy and lonesomeness, indicated by the newly muted palette, that is effective but a tad overwrought, in my opinion. More interesting to me is the metatextual context of Muchimaro taking their ryona self-insert and thinking about how she'd operate in the real world. This transmutes Komaro's well-below-average stature, for instance, from something abstract and fetishized into a physical trait that impedes Komaro's interactions with the world around her. Again, I don't think this dramatic shift totally works, but it speaks to the series' ambitions beyond exposed nipples.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Janome's incredible character design. As an aspiring alt girl myself, she's kind of #goals with her two-tone dyed hair, choker with chain, many piercings, and pet snake who makes the Metal Gear Solid alert sound. Let's just say she's definitely not dissuading me from considering an industrial piercing.
Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is currently streaming on OceanVeil.
Sylvia is on Bluesky for all of your posting needs. She loves hole. And yes, she is reusing that joke from her Dorohedoro reviews. You can also catch her chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.