All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. This review was commissioned that means I was paid to watch the series in question and review it. You may learn more about my commission policies herehttps://twitter.com/planetJane/status/1214915253047349249 880https://i.ur.com/447PW4y.png Writing about Turning Girls almost feels like a critical trap. Its generally left out of the history and filmography of 2010s aestheticiansmaster Studio TRIGGER. And theres a reason for that despite sometimes being branded as a product of the studio its more apt to say that Turning Girls is a show by people who happen to work at TRIGGERs office. To wit of the entire staff only the director Masahiko Ootsuka has worked on anime before or since. The rest of the motley crew behind Turning Girls was a collection of office workers secretaries janitors and other incidental office personnel. It looks it too. The anime is really more of an audio drama with accompanying still drawingsyou can count the number of frames in most episodes without much trouble. Each episode is only about five minutes long and you can easily knock the thing out in half an hour. The resulting whateveritis was dropped onto Youtube in 2013 with little fanfare on Anime Bancho a channel that hosted a number of shows like this before abruptly going quiet in August of 2018. English subtitles of dubious officiality were affixed to the series sometime later and there it sits quietly racking up views from the curious or simply the bored. 880https://i.ur.com/RKAUv2w.png Turning Girls plotsuch as it isis an example of a work comedy sanded down to its most essential elements. Our four main characters all of whom work in the same office are Nana a nice domestic type nearing her 30th birthday. Kai a goth whos into metal and extreme alternative fashion. Chiwa a dilligent office worker who also happens to be closeted yaoi fanatic and Kaerun an obnoxious indie idol who also works at a maid cafe and is in possession of a truly earsplitting voice. The four are apparently loosely based on their voice actresses which is either gentle ribbing between friends or an example of intraoffice bullying. In general the show is rather well mean to its characters. Our four leads put up with their day jobs to pursue their passions all of which are pretty weird by usual societal standards something the show goes out of its way to mock. Chiwa gets the worst of it early on. Episode 2 revolves around her fantasizing about pairs of boys around her office. First her manager and a berated underling then a pair of twin boys yikes and culminating in idle fantasies about the hot and cold water in the water cooler hooking up. 880https://i.ur.com/Sj0xnUW.png Similarly Kais focus episodeofsorts 4 sees her inviting her coworkers to a metal concert. A scene shes apparently somewhat famous in for for her elaborate costumes. Of course she gets arrested for disturbing the peace and her coworkers cant be assed to help. The show does occasionally let a tiny bit of sincerity poke through in these moments such as here: 880https://i.ur.com/rVHrpua.png But these instances are rare. Kaeruns episode is downright hard to watch. Being entirely a single unbroken stream from her webcam onto NicoNicos livestreaming service or whatever the equivalent may be during which various uncomfortable things happen. She loudly sings an offkey overlycutesy song gets in a fight with her mom gets her stream raided by 2channel trolls. You get the idea. 880https://i.ur.com/taNyVlB.png This is the face of a woman whos just realized shes about to end up in a cringe compilation. The finale well last proper episode. There is a 7th but its an odd postshow wrapup thing is pretty rough too. Featuring the comparatively normal Nana getting broken up with and fired on her 30th birthday her friends arguing over who hates her the most and then having a princely doctor back off the moment the clock strikes midnight which instantly ages her into a grandma. 880https://i.ur.com/JIg6FWI.png You get the general idea. Honestly on the whole the show is a bit of an annoying experience. Certainly taken the way it was presumably meant as an elaborate injoke between friends its fine but that doesnt actually translate to a particularly compelling watching experience and the entire thing just feels way too black to be actually funny. Conversely its too brief to feel like its really meant to mean anything. If youve ever caught a close friend making extremely dark jokes on Twitter to cope with going through a bad spell Turning Girls is that feeling extended to a 30 minute anime. Its a bit of a shame too. Since we do get a few great gags like Kaerun trying to turn up at a death metal concert. 880https://i.ur.com/ficLLco.png And the aforementioned hot water/cold water yaoi. The arts pretty nice too even having a surprisingly strong aesthetic for something with next to no actual animation. Still these comparatively minor strengths dont make this series recommendable. Its a black comedy that simply doesnt have the time to build up the good faith to make that dichotomy actually mean anything so it just ends up feeling annoying and meanspirited. The real shame is that despite its own insistence otherwise the characters who star in Turning Girls actually are likable if weird. Given more time or even just more care its quite possible a good comedy series couldve come from this but Turning Girls just isnt that series. To the people who made it Turning Girls might mean something. For everyone else it is exactly what it appears to be a Youtube oddity that is more bizarre than worthwhile. And if you liked this review why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?https://anilist.co/user/planetJane/reviews