Asobi Asobase: Cosplay Contest/To the Future Me
あそびあそばせ コスプレ大会 / 大人の私へ (Asobi Asobase: Cosplay Taikai/Otona no Watashi e)
- Comedy
- Gag Humor
- School
- Episodes
- 1
- Duration
- 13 min
- Aired
- Dec 26, 2018
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
With permission secured to screen their movie at the school cultural festival, the Pastime Club turns its attention to what to wear for the occasion. What starts as a simple planning session quickly spirals into an over-the-top costume debate, and the trio begins trying out their ideas in earnest.
Meanwhile, the Film Studies Club uses a Macintosh computer donated by Chisato Higuchi’s father to type letters addressed to their future selves 15 years down the line. They fill the messages with bold promises and lofty ambitions—only for reality to take a very different course than they imagined.
Otaku Consensus
Asobi Asobase: Cosplay Contest/To the Future Me plays like a compact encore for viewers already tuned to the series’ abrasive frequency: Lerche’s elastic reaction animation, ugly-face timing, and two-part OVA pacing keep the jokes sharper than a standard bonus episode. Its reputation remains split along the same fault line as the main series: fans praise the slapstick cruelty and sudden tonal whiplash, while detractors find the humor mean-spirited and dependent on gag tropes whose novelty can wear thin.
Why You Should Watch
Watch this if you want a school comedy that refuses to be cute in the expected way: the appeal is not clubroom warmth, but the precision with which adorable character designs collapse into shrieks, grotesque faces, and social self-destruction. This OVA is especially useful as a final taste of the anime because it trims the format to two segments and spends its runtime on escalation rather than setup. It scratches a neighboring itch to Nichijou’s absurd escalation and Daily Lives of High School Boys’ student idiocy, but with a nastier bite and more weaponized embarrassment. If you like comedy where the punchline is often the characters realizing they are trapped inside their own terrible decisions, this bonus episode delivers concentrated Asobi Asobase without overstaying its welcome.
Key Characters
- HHanako Honda(VA: Hina Kino)
Hanako is the series’ high-volume chaos engine, the kind of character fans remember less for restraint than for how completely she detonates a normal club conversation.
- KKasumi Nomura(VA: Konomi Kohara)
Kasumi gives the trio a deceptively composed counterweight, which makes her deadpan reactions and sudden participation in the madness land harder.
- OOlivia(VA: Rika Nagae)
Olivia’s appeal comes from the gap between her instantly recognizable presence and the show’s talent for turning that presence into increasingly ridiculous misunderstandings.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
This is a single-episode OVA released after the TV run, so it functions as a concentrated coda rather than a new entry point; one user review even frames it as technically the last episode of Asobi Asobase.
- 2
The episode uses a two-story structure instead of the TV series’ usual rapid sketch rhythm, giving each gag scenario more room to snowball before the cutaway reset.
- 3
Lerche’s production identity is central to the comedy: the studio leans on deliberately distorted expressions and abrupt animation shifts rather than polished cuteness as the main delivery system for punchlines.
- 4
The reception profile is unusually clear for a bonus episode: it holds a 7.51 MAL score from 28,861 votes and a 7.7 IMDb rating, suggesting that the OVA satisfied the existing fanbase more than it broadened the audience.
- 5
The humor sits in the gag-comedy tradition of school anime but pushes harder into embarrassment and verbal cruelty, which is exactly the quality critics cite both as its signature strength and its most divisive flaw.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- The OVA was included with the seventh volume of the Asobi Asobase manga rather than airing as part of the original TV broadcast.
- Fun fact 2
- It was released on December 26, 2018, several months after the Summer 2018 television series had already finished airing.
- Fun fact 3
- Despite being only one episode, it has enough database traction to rank at #3464 in MAL popularity with 28,861 recorded votes at the time of the provided data.
- Fun fact 4
- The central trio retains the TV anime’s Japanese voice cast: Hina Kino as Hanako Honda, Konomi Kohara as Kasumi Nomura, and Rika Nagae as Olivia.
- Fun fact 5
- Critical blurbs around the series repeatedly single out its funny faces, slapstick construction, and willingness to make its characters act stupid or jerk-ish as the reasons it feels distinct from softer school comedies.
Studios
- Lerche
