mlleangelique

The animation is excellent, the cats are delightful and it feels like it isn't written by a clueless straight person as so many such stories are.

But... that doesn't mean it's written *well*. I've not read the manga it's based on, but the distinct impression it gives is of an adaptation that has decided a number of bits need to be cut out, but done so in a way that leaves massive confusing gaps. Time passes and it's not clear what's happened. Characters in it refer to events that we've never seen. People's reactions make no sense and feel like they're missing important context. It's sweet at points, but honestly very incoherent.

A tediously patronising and utterly charmless portrayal of studenthood, Fresh Meat views like the imagination of someone who hasn't been near a university in a zillion years, and whose ideas about students are formed entirely from ridiculous news reports of depoliticised yet scary&violent student demonstrators, and something wot they read in a magazine once. Characters are about as sympathetic and believable as Jar Jar Binks.

As the better moments of Peep Show indicate, Bain and Armstrong are capable of more than this. Having said that - think of all the characters the pair have ever written who aren't white, male, middle aged and middle class. Any stand out as particularly well-developed and thought-through? Maybe it shouldn't exactly be a surprise that their portrayal of a somewhat diverse group of twentyish year olds seems concocted from profoundly lazy stereotypes.