It opens by torching its own legacy: six identical Showa gag-manga brothers reborn as sparkling bishonen idols, a parody so pointed the episode got yanked from release. That's the deal here. Twenty-five episodes of unemployed thirty-going-on-twelve energy where Karamatsu poses in sunglasses and gets called Kusomatsu for it, Ichimatsu rots in the corner with stray cats, Jyushimatsu swings a bat at nothing, and Todomatsu quietly plays all five of them for a table at a nice cafe. Iyami still yells Sheeeh, Chibita still runs the oden cart, and nobody grows as a person, which is the joke. Then the show turns around and gives Jyushimatsu a girl in a yellow hoodie and breaks you clean in half for eleven minutes. Deliberately cheap-looking, machine-gun fast, mean in a way most comedies are too polite to try. You will either be crying with laughter or checking if the file is corrupted.

Six identical brothers in their twenties still live together in the same family home, jobless and without a shred of ambition. Osomatsu, Karamatsu, Choromatsu, Ichimatsu, Jyushimatsu, and Todomatsu are NEETs who bicker over who covers the bar tab, who gets the last pastry, and whether any of them will ever find work. Each has his own personality: Osomatsu is the self-centered leader, Karamatsu plays the tough guy, Choromatsu is the voice of reason, Ichimatsu is cynical, Jyushimatsu is hyperactive, and Todomatsu is the spoiled, lovable one. Their neighborhood is just as odd, home to fish market idol Totoko, the loud bucktoothed troublemaker Iyami, the inventor Dekapan, and other eccentrics. Once grade-schoolers in the Showa era, the brothers now face a much-changed modern world, and their attempts at jobs and girlfriends tend to spiral into bizarre comedy.