3 Episode Taste Test: Chu-Bra!!

Another series another las­ci­vi­ous story seed, this time with the form­a­tion of a high school under­wear club by a girl smit­ten with all things under­wear. Rolling one’s eyes and plough­ing into the first three epis­odes of Chu-Bra!! it becomes increas­ingly appar­ent that this isn’t the naughty teen­age giggle parade that is expec­ted from such a premise. Instead it is a charm­ingly sex­less cel­eb­ra­tion of a girl whose pas­sion is looked upon with dis­dain by the prudish or ant­ag­on­istic stu­dents of a school that is all but aligned against her, a situ­ation easy to relate to in prin­ciple if not in implementation.

“Hiroki, who suf­fers from a rare form of under­wear paralysis”

At the entrance cere­mony of middle school, Nayu embar­rasses her­self by trip­ping up when called to give the open­ing speech; this also inad­vert­ently exposes her adult under­wear to an unsus­pect­ing stu­dent body who begin to cir­cu­late rumours about her par­tak­ing of com­pensated dat­ing and other less whole­some activ­it­ies. In real­ity how­ever Nayu simply loves under­wear, des­pite her ador­a­tion res­ult­ing in her being a pariah since junior school, it takes some invest­ig­a­tion but two class­mates, Yako and Haruka, dis­cover the truth behind Nayu and become fast friends with her. As Nayu’s con­fid­ence grows she sug­gests the form­a­tion of an under­wear club, how­ever this is met with res­ist­ance from the uptight head of the more gen­eric han­di­crafts club and find­ing mem­bers proves an uphill struggle, even if she is wear­ing the brassier and panties her grand­mother gif­ted her.

Almost apo­lo­get­ic­ally so, the first epis­odes of the series fea­ture a smat­ter­ing of linger­ing pos­terior shots and springy cleav­age moments. At first they’re pleas­antly restrained and any­one passingly famil­iar with innu­mer­able other raunchy series will find them tame; how­ever the second epis­ode dis­poses of the out­land­ish slap­stick found in the first and pro­duces a sur­pris­ingly poignant look at the insec­ur­it­ies of a school girl still com­ing to terms with puberty. From that launch­ing pad the third epis­ode cov­ers the tribu­la­tions of Nayu who des­per­ately wishes to share her pas­sion but is greeted with indif­fer­ence and a scorn so eas­ily spouted by gangs of back­bit­ing stu­dents. More than just an emotive explor­a­tion of school life, the series con­cerns itself more with edu­ca­tion than smut and fre­quently uses visual euphem­isms as Nayu explains the finer details of bra choice.

The found­a­tion of the series though is light-hearted com­edy, it takes pleas­ure in the absurdit­ies the female lead engenders which range from the mis­in­ter­pret­a­tion of her affec­tion for Haruka’s bust to Yako’s quest to sur­repti­tiously pho­to­graph Nayu’s under­gar­ments. This atti­tude per­meates the first three epis­odes of the show with a lilt­ing pas­tel col­our palette, exten­ded high-tempo open­ing and end­ing and spin­ning under­wear scene trans­itions. What taints this set up how­ever is a sig­ni­fic­ant lack of chem­istry between the three lead girls who oper­ate more or less inde­pend­ently of one another and seem con­nec­ted in only the most super­flu­ous of ways. The intro­duc­tion of Kiy­ono, fore­told in both open­ing and end­ing, and the third epis­ode premier of Hiroki, who suf­fers from a rare form of under­wear para­lysis, could well mix up an oth­er­wise staid cast.

In the open­ing trio of epis­odes, Chu-Bra!! doesn’t feel like it has hit its stride quite yet, but at only thir­teen epis­odes the series could well be over before it has. It doesn’t com­pletely shed the bawdy con­nota­tions of its premise how­ever the prot­ag­on­ist is affable, helped along by all-round pudgy char­ac­ter designs, and the exe­cu­tion is pleas­ant and easy to watch how­ever it never quite escapes a linger­ing impass­ive­ness that mani­fests as a “take it or leave it” view­ing men­tal­ity. A fun but ulti­mately shal­low open­ing to a series unlikely to betray those who stick with it. ¶