Picked up the Comic Party Revolution thinpak collection. I originally watched Revolution through Netflix. It’s not great anime and probably not even mediocre anime, but it’s the kind of show I can easily put in the DVD player and watch again while doing other things like alphabetizing my CDs and breaking down those Hobby Search boxes for the trash. Plus, Taishi cracks me up all the time, so I grabbed it and watched it again over the weekend.
Comic Party Revolution continues where the first Comic Party series left off — Kazuki is now a college student and still doing his fan comic creation thing while his harem keeps him busy. Revolution moves the doujinshi artist angle a little more to the background than the first series. The doujin thing still goes on in Revolution, but now that Kazuki has established himself and we’ve gone through the learning phase Revolution plays closer to a light harem comedy with characters who just happen to be part of the doujin community. All the usual crap goes on, the baseball episode, the hot springs episode, the camping episode, the let’s help the friend in need episode, etc. The otaku culture in Revolution is more setting than it is subject, which is somewhat disappointing when compared with the first series.
It isn’t necessary to watch the first Comic Party in order to watch Revolution, but of the two I think the first series has more going for it.
English Dub Notes
ADV didn’t bring back the Headline Studios cast from the first season. That kind of sucked because I liked the Headline cast. Going into the new cast I figured I would most miss Liam O’Brien as Taishi (O’Brien stole the first show), but Josh Grelle does proud what Liam set with Taishi in the first series and wound up not missing O’Brien as much as I thought I would. The actors I missed most from the Headline cast was Rachel Lillis as Mizuki and Georgette Reilly as Yuu, simply because I think between the ADV and Headline dubs the characterizations were the most different there.
Release Notes
The Complete Collection for Comic Party Revolution comes in a chipboard box with three thinpack encased DVDs. As far as I can tell these are the same DVDs as the singles release as all the extras seem to be intact.
Edit: Suguru notes that this release has the TV versions of the first four episodes and not the slightly longer OVA versions of them.
Parting Shot
The best part about Revolution is I don’t find it annoying, because the main chick Mizuki doesn’t go anywhere near the same state of “please shut the hell up” that most main harem chicks go. She’s even less of a nag in CPR than she was in the first series. It’s also funny and cute at times. Maybe I like this pretty mediocre show because I always hoped that at some point I would have the energy and dedication to draw my own comic, but that’s never going to happen. In the end Comic Party Revolution is just stupid harem comedy fluff for you to enjoy, loathe, or be indifferent to.
CPR wasn’t a bad series, although ADV’s release annoyed me on one count: they used the TV version of the first four episodes instead of the OVA version (about 4-5 minutes of footage was cut out of the first four episodes to get them from ~30 min OVA length down to ~25 min TV length). You’re right that it’s nothing spectacular, but Taishi is hilarious, so I’d probably have bought it just for the entertainment value there.
I hope that I see a release of CPR in Australia. CP and CPR is one of my favourite series, but I find CPR to be the better of the two.
I havn’t watched CPR yet, but I did watch CP, and it was one of my favourite series. Mizuki was pretty much my 2D “Goddess” at one point or another.
I should get around to watching CPR…
If you liked the first one then the second one should work for you too. I think I really liked the comic creation aspect of the first one a lot, which leads me to liking the first season more. Either way, I think it’s good fluff.
Now that I hear that there was another more complete OVA version, I’m wishing ADV could have gotten the rights for those.