Mr. Tines wrote:Not really. Beyond the westaboo reference dropping, and innuendo, it relied on finding cute Japanese girls swearing like chavs funny.
It had plenty of slapstick and an overall comedic atmosphere. I felt that atmosphere was a huge part of what made PASWG fun - everything in each scene from art to expressive character animation to voice fun acting to musical accompaniment made for a very unique atmosphere at all times.
I am the rare kind of in the middle. Enjoy part of its moments (idea, parodies, music, outrageous-ness) but not liking some (I am a lot more used to the anime kind of character design so the overly western style is a down for me, overloaded cursing and irreverent language, overdone outrageous-ness). At the end I enjoy enough to finish the series but I do not follow how one can love it so much or hate it so much i dunno, lol
I feel that it's absolutely perfect for people who got into anime because they really liked cartoons in general and found out that there is some anime out there that is very good when judged by the same standards. But people who started watching anime to get away from American cartoons are naturally going to find a lot of stuff to dislike, in more than just artwork. It's a very visuals-centric show - I'm actually more dumbfounded that people who didn't care for the visuals ended up not being so-so on the show like you were, but actually LOVING it. Lines like "MY SAUSAGE IS BIG AND BLACK" just seem unfunny and dumb to me on their own so I'm like "lol what the hell" when someone says that "in a show like this, animation doesn't matter" or that they only liked it for the writing & characters. Of course the characters are conceptually interesting but the way they were drawn & acted (and I don't mean just voice acting but also visual acting) is half of what makes them fun to watch.
For all of his quirks I feel that Imaishi has a very, very good understanding of animation as a unique visual medium - he's really good at appealing to not just anime fans, but also general animation fans.