When I put Do It Yourself on my watchlist for this month, I was expecting a more generally explanatory anime series – something along the lines of Diary of our Days at the Breakwater something comedic, and explanatory about the subject matter in question (handicrafts in this case) – and chill but not necessarily a “healing” or “Iyashikei” anime. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was also one of the warmest and most life-affirming anime of the season.
The show follows Yua Serufu, a laid back and kinda clumsy high school girl, who has (due to her test scores) gotten into the Gatagata Girls’ High School instead of the more prestigious and high-tech Yuyu Girls’ Vocational High School (which literally overshadows the Gatagata campus) – which Serufu’s childhood friend and next door neighbor, Miku Suride (or “Purin”, as she’s nicknamed by Serufu) has gotten into.
After Serufu gets some help fixing her bike from the president (and sole member) of the Gatagata “DIY Club” – Rei Yasaku – Serufu decides to join the club, and help get enough members to help keep the club alive. This ends up entailing learning about all kinds of handicrafts, from making their own jewelry, to carpentry, to making mosaics with pottery shards. All of this while accumulating more club members (both official members and unofficial members from Yuyu), leading to their ultimate goal of building a treehouse.
Do It Yourself’s level of chill generally comes from how minor any setbacks the characters have in the show are, and the lack of real antagonism. It’s a lot like Laid Back Camp in that regard. There’s one real setback the characters face towards the end of the series, and it’s resolved in a very heartwarming manner.
Ultimately, DIY was one of the shows this season that I found myself actively looking forward to each week – it was generally the only show I was watching that was airing on Wednesday, so if it was bad I could have just dropped it (especially with a potentially leftover episode of Chainsaw Man from the day before that could have been waiting – if I hadn’t gotten to watch the show that day). Instead, I found that this was a show that made for a wonderfully chill wind down after work.
Do It Yourself is currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll.
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