D-Frag!
Episode 3 – Fujou Academy Freedom Festival, AKA FuF Festival

Now that we have a new batch of characters we also have our first bit of story progression for D-Frag! and it comes in the form of a competition between the Fake Game Creation Club and the real Game Creation Club as they compete at the upcoming school festival, dubbed the FuF Festival, to see whose game will receive the most visitors. Now if the real Game Creation Club wins, the fake club will be absorbed into the club but if the Fake club wins, what will happen then?

After last week’s reveal that there are two clubs and the reason for the split is due to troubles that Roka had in the real Game Creation Club and misunderstandings between her and Takao that has led to the current stand-off. Despite this not really being his problem, Kazama has stepped in to help settle this feud and now that the festival is almost upon them, the two clubs are working hard to try and come up with a winning idea.

Well, one club is anyways as the fake club is barely trying and instead thinking up ways that they can try and sabotage the other team. Despite the intentions of the rest of the fake club, Kazama tries to remain honest and when he visits the real club, there are a few meaningful moments that show that not only is this club actually trying its hardest but also some comedic ones as well with the trap character forced to cross-dress once again and some minor but oblivious fan-service provided by the air-headed Takao as she unintentionally rubs her breasts to no avail against Kazama’s spiky hair.

Anyways, what unfolded from there is something quite interesting as far as games go. Where the Game Creation Club was trying to create actual video games for people to play, the Fake Club instead established a large attraction with numerous physical games to play, such as board games, darts and more. This leads to a minor confrontation between the differences in games, but with no specifics ever established it is pretty clear who the winner ended up being.

All in all, this episode continued to be fairly enjoyable though the humor was downplayed a bit to try and push the story between the two clubs forward. Where there were mostly laughs before we instead are treated to a few touching moments where Takao comes to understand why Roka is doing what she is doing, though to be fair, there were still a number of rather hilarious jokes on display, usually jumping up to break up a serious moment or to use Tokao’s large breasts for gags. There was even a bit of fan-service thanks to some cosplay that the girls ended up wearing but nothing even close to being ecchi as it was mostly played for laughs.

We also get a few side-characters introduced as well, though it appears that they will be playing bit-parts and probably will not appear anymore outside of a few small gags. In fact, every character introduced so far, including Kazama’s old gang and his masochistic friend, had a minor role to play in this episode.

Also a few notes on this episode. I’ve seen a few soft drinks shown in anime in the past with their real names, with Dr. Pepper being the prime example but almost always names of products or corporations are either changed just enough to avoid copyright issues or censored. However the teacher’s drink is always shown as Mountain Dew, an interesting choice considering I’ve never seen that before in an anime and the fact that she is almost always sleeping or lazing about.

Another note is that while FUNimation is doing a decent job with D-Frag!’s subtitles, providing sign translation for the many signs in the series, there were a few awkwardly translated lines in this episode which ruins the flow of the show a bit. I’m not speaking about the way Kazama speaks, as it fits his character type of being a delinquent, but about unintentional grammar issues that crop up in the subtitles from time to time.

Currently D-Frag! is available for streaming in the United States by FUNimation. As for the rest of our winter impressions, you can check out our Anime Impressions page.

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