24 June 2016: Bakuon!! turned out to be the best show from Spring 2016
Hane gets by with help from her reliable imouto.
I was expecting to enjoy Bakuon!! on general principle, but I'm still surprised to see it at the top of my Spring 2016 rankings. Silly and a little irreverent, Bakuon!! is a charming show about high school girls who really like motorcycles. If you've seen much anime, you're surely familiar with the "girls really enjoy this thing" brand of moé pandering. For example, K-On! did this with guitars, GIRLS und PANZER did this with tanks, and Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai did this with incest.
Objects in mirror are larger than they appear.
In light of this, I get the feeling "Girls Really Like a Thing" shows probably do better when the Thing in question is a bit esoteric or at least a niche interest among the show's target demographic. (Mountaineering, for example, as opposed to yet another girl who loves anime, manga, and video games.) Then again, specification alone wasn't enough for Haifuri, so it's just a rule of thumb at best.
Raimu breaks a lot of laws on this show.
The above K-On! mention may remind longtime readers I railed against "retard moé" seven years ago and cause them to wonder why I enjoyed Bakuon!! so much when its lead character is, to put it mildly, dumb all Hell. It is entirely possible I like Hane largely because of my Ueda Reina bias, but I think an important distinction relates to how Hane and her idiocy fits within the world around her.
Onsa and Yukari could exchange haircare tips.
Specifically, Hane does not make life more difficult for those around her. Moreover, her idiocy is more along the lines of startling ignorance rather than a lack of capacity to reason or learn. The impolite axiom "stupid people make everything more difficult" frequently manifests as a narrative tool or comic trope to rally action and reactions among a story's characters. This was certainly true in the K-On! episodes I watched, where Yui's, um, peculiar mannerisms (autism, some boasted) coupled with Ritsu's laziness to construct comedic situations opposite the serious Mio.
The motorcycle brands themselves are also essentially characters in the
show, from Honda and Kawasaki to even Suzuki and Amazon.co.jp!
Hane, on the other hand, clearly does not know much about anything, but she's eager to learn—at least about motorcycles. Her enthusiasm for the subject makes her endearing because her more knowledgeable friends are happy to educate and indulge her in their shared interest. Maybe I like Hane because everyone else likes Hane. She seems like she'd be fun to be around, maybe ride some motorcycles and go camping with, even if she is dumb as all Hell.
