Do It Yourself!! Review — A- | Draggle's Anime Blog

Cute girls make a do it yourself club.

From first glance this shouldn’t be my thing but it was sooo good. One of the key things that made it succeed, I think, is how simple it was. It knew the story it wanted to tell and it didn’t get distracted. It was all about these characters and conveying their personalities. It had a lot of depth to the characterizations and the setting but it was very subtle— for example, the matter of fact but nearly unmentioned use of robots and techhnology, the whole substories with the pig an the OS upgrade, etc. You learned a great deal about the characters without having to be explicitly told. And the simplistic yet stylish art style fit this theme as well.

In a similar vein, I enjoyed the nuanced perspectives the show took. I expected it to be a bit anti-technology but it wasn’t at all. Science and technology are cool but so is art an making things! And they complement each other too. Same with the titular “do it yourself” theme. The lesson is, even with “do it yourself”, it takes a community. A very wholesome message for a very wholesome show. My favorite episode was the one where Serufu was worried she was the only one who hadn’t contributed anything, but her gifts were obvious to everyone else.

I complain sometimes how all these shows of cute girls forming clubs are all the same and I’m sick and tired of it. And that makes a show like DIY all the more remarkable because it takes this tired formula and gives you something completely fresh and new. Representative of this is the whole plot of getting enough members to keep the club going. The show ends with them acquiring the right number, but two don’t go to their school so they don’t count. Everyone is like, “oh well, I’m sure it will work out!” and the show ends with them still working towards their goal.