Plastic Nee-san is a gag comedy anime about the absurd lives of 3 high school girls. Iroe Genma, Makina Sazamaki, and Hazuki Okamoto are all members of their school’s plastic models club. Though not everyone is in the club because they actually care about models.
Iroe is the head of the club, though you wouldn’t be able to tell by her behavior. She is hyper at all times and in constant need of attention. She loves to cause mischief and bully her friends, often by grossing them out with inappropriate behavior. Hazuki is generally friendly and polite, until her fuse runs out. Whenever Iroe pushes her luck, Hazuki’s retribution is swift and extremely violent. Lastly, Makina acts as something of a straight man/victim for the group. Although she has eccentricities of her own.
The tone of comedy through Plastic Nee-san is indulgently weird, sometimes bordering on the surreal. It often shoots for the same kind of snappy, isolated jokes that made scenes from Nichijou so popular to share in gifs. To the point that the friend I watched it with assured me that I would recognize some jokes right away. He was correct.
Potentially disappointing for some is that Plastic Nee-san isn’t really about plastic models all that much. The club is there and sometimes the girls work on models, but many jokes are entirely unrelated to that hobby. If you were hoping to actually see cute girls play Warhammer or crafting realistic recreations of old tanks, then no. This anime is not that.
Overall, I had a great time with the show. The jokes had me laughing and I quickly took a liking to the characters. Its running gags are also efficient and I enjoyed the mildly lewd touch to a lot of its jokes. As with many TV shorts though, it is painfully short. 12 episodes of 2 minutes apiece. For a series whose manga is ongoing to this very day, it’s a shame that we didn’t get more of Plastic Nee-san. You’re telling me 20+ volumes of manga and massive viral appeal can’t buy you a second season these days?
