Daily Lives of High School Boys is such a flawless rendition of the absurdities of a group of high school guys finding useless amusement together day after day, I can’t tell if it perfectly captures the way high school was for me, or if it perfectly captures the way I remember high school being. Another possibility is that it captures the way high school should be. Taking away all the coincidence, dramatic irony, and unrealistic slapstick from the slice-of-life genre, the everyday experiences of this group of students ends up having more tension and comedy, despite lacking any purpose or episodic themes to nucleate around. Or maybe it's because it lacks those things. My favorite memories of high school had nothing to do with the preparation leading up to the big festival, or the eventful beach trip my friends and I took; it was the ones about laying on the floor of my friend’s house and coming up with a bad joke to roll with for the next ten minutes. It was the individual conversations that lasted less than five minutes but spawned endless inside jokes. Nothing was more quintessential of what I'd call the high school experience.
It surprised me that Daily Lives of High School Boys isn’t based on a 4-koma manga, as splitting episodes into collections of short bits is usually indicative of that style. Still, to represent that vignette version of enjoying high school, the episode choice was perfect. No joke gets drawn out too long, and recurring bits and callbacks become great touchstones for the rest of the content. One recurring bit I particularly loved takes place on a riverbank at sunset, the perfect setting for reading and relaxing with no one else around. Yet one boy and one girl always seem to end up right next to each other without noticing, at which point they both go through the mental gymnastics of trying to appear calm and collected while actually alleviating the awkwardness. Nothing to do with love, just trying to cope with the opposite gender. Neither shows any physical signs of the issue at hand, until they open their mouths and say the first thing that comes to mind, usually along the lines of “the wind is crying today”. Basically they both need a bit more practice with not appearing like a complete dweeb.
Due to being at an all-boys school, the best moments of tension come from making contact with the neighboring girl’s school. Both student councils share a grudging respect and help each other out, but the male students can only share their stupid dreams about their female counterparts from afar. Then the group spots one of them with a girl and the whole class turns on the bullying. Watching these particular gender tensions with a Japanese friend who attended an all-boys high school, the experience was accurate he couldn't keep it together. For a group of virginal high school boys, the girls could have been in the next class over, the next school over, or the next planet over, and the result would be pretty much the same.
One trio of boys could be considered the main characters as they show up the most, but their friendship is only one part of the fun. They also switch over to the other class members and the girl’s school often, and for a few episodes in the middle they completely disappear with no explanation, leading to both a diversity of characters and a stream of conspiracy theories from fans. A group of female students try and host their own competing show High School Girls are Trendy, which mostly ends with them realizing that their shy friend is the most terrifying and bold of them all. The student councils throw events together, juggling their excessive responsibilities with their identities as students themselves. People deal with siblings, friends, friends of friends, coworkers, total strangers, and everyone else under the sun. The one common thread is that everyone exists in the bubble of high school, that confusing microcosm of society that is completely removed from the rest of the world. The trio of boys is the funniest, to be sure, but everyone else is no less capable of providing another comedic facet of the whole experience.
Perhaps it all works because the writing and scenarios are both ridiculously unbelievable and completely natural for the setting. If you told me that real high school boys would wear their little sister’s underwear out of curiosity and boredom, I would be skeptical at best. But if it did happen, it would look exactly like their version from the first episode. A few of the characters are liable to take the bits way over the top, but the real enjoyment is seeing everyone around them trying to adapt. The usual high-tension tsukkomi punchlines are there of course, but more often than not whoever is trying to play the straight man gets caught up in the whole absurd affair before even realizing it. If the bokes fail at living in the real world, then the tsukkomis fail at living in the bokes’ fantasy worlds, and they often fail spectacularly enough that they barely come off as the smart ones. Everything goes in love, war, and killing time in high school.
Whatever the reason, I never got tired of watching Daily Lives of High School Boys. Everything felt fresh and hilarious every single time, even the recurring bits and callbacks. Few if any of the jokes fell flat, and seeing the punchline coming isn’t enough to be immune to the effect. I would have made friends with most of them were I back in high school, but in retrospect I think I already did. It was a very particular time, where classes, friends, and chance interactions with the opposite sex all came together and kept any moment from being particularly dull or unnoteworthy. Some were certainly bad; high school isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, as pretty much any real person can attest to. But if I took all the good or outlandish ones and put them together, it would definitely be a high-tension comedy, and at best it would look exactly like Daily Lives of High School Boys .