Ao-chan Can't Study!: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Ao-chan Can't Study!: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 7, 2020

Ao-chan Can’t Study! features the heroine of the title, a girl who is trying to keep the fact that her father writes pornographic books from the general public (or at least her high school), in an anime that kind of ironically tiptoes at least occasionally right up to near ecchi material with lingering shots of rear ends and lots of sexual situations. That said, there’s an underlying sweetness to much of the story presented in this anime that will probably keep it from seeming too smarmy for many viewers. The series is interesting in that each of its 12 episodes are only around 15 minutes long (slightly shorter than that, no doubt to leave room for commercials), which means this is, if nothing else, a pretty brisk watch, and an a relatively undemanding one at that.

The anime begins with Ao remembering her childhood, and specifically the day she shared in a kind of "show and tell" setting the history of her father coming up with her name. For reasons I wasn't able to totally glean (perhaps in a "lost in translation" moment), that revelation was the beginning of Ao's social problems, and it has taught her to try to stay away from people, notably boys, as much as possible. She's a good student and aside from having a reputation as a kind of stern, no nonsense type, she doesn't really have a ton of problems other than that she's become obsessed with a popular boy at her high school named Takumi Kajima.

Despite episode titles like Ao-chan Can't Protect Her Lower Half and/or Ao-chan Can't Wear Silky Panties, the show is really more of a portrait in anxiety and awkardness than it is provocative. And in fact one thing that Ao-chan ends up learning is that there can be boys who are interested in something other than the subject her father constantly writes about. There's some sweet humor here, but the show is kind of a middling property, undistinguished in either its stylistic sensibility or really even its characters. It's watchable, and those with some time kill may find this an agreeable enough enterprise even if it ultimately doesn't do anything new or innovative.

Ao-chan Can't Study!: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ao-chan Can't Study! is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a competent looking presentation that struck me as just a tad bright at times, meaning the entire palette can look just slightly washed out and as if there's a kind of milky haze on it at times. That said, colors pop pretty well throughout the episodes, with elements like Ao's hair (which can be alternately blue or purple depending on "lighting" conditions) looking nicely suffused. Line detail is generally very sharp, but for some reason, the animators have done some kind of weird stuff with mouths in this piece, where in some scenes in particular lips are rendered as straight lines the simply move apart and together as people speak.

Ao-chan Can't Study!: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ao-chan Can't Study! features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks in either the original Japanese (with forced English subtitles) or English (with no optional English subtitles). Both tracks sounded interchangeable to my ears with regard to overall amplitude and mix. I personally preferred the voice actors on the Japanese version, but the English voice cast is fine, with Sarah Wiedenheft's English language take on Ao-chan a bit more exasperated sounding, and some may in fact prefer that version. Fidelity is fine on both tracks, and the kind of J-pop music also sounds fine.

Ao-chan Can't Study!: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:02)


• Clean Closing Animations (1080p; 2:22)

Additionally, Disc Credits and Sentai Trailers are also available.

Ao-chan Can't Study!: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ao-chan Can't Study! has some occasional goofy humor, and its depiction of what Bob Seger once famously called "working on mysteries without any clues" can be intermittently engaging. The entire series comes off as somewhat lackluster, though, without any true laugh out loud moments (at least for this particular viewer), and a kind of rote feeling to both its animation and general storyline. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase, though considering the amount of content here (with each episode clocking in at about half the time as normal episodes), some may want to wait for a bit of a price drop.