It may be that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But as Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle demonstrate in the new Hulu comedy “PEN15,” the same is true of those who remember it painfully well.

The series, arriving Friday, kicks off just before the first day of seventh grade in 2000 for Maya Ishii-Peters (Erskine) and Anna Kone (Konkle). Maya, hoping to start school with a new identity, picks up a pair of scissors to give herself Sarah Michelle Gellar’s haircut. The next morning — her handiwork corrected by her mother with the aid of a mixing bowl — she slumps next to Anna in their morning car pool. “It looks so good!” Anna assures her, with a brace-faced smile.

It does not. And their first day goes as badly as you might expect: This is middle school, after all. But what distinguishes the series isn’t the cringe comedy. It’s the immediate sincere-weirdo voice, which powers “PEN15” through an uneven but delightfully odd first season.

“PEN15,” the square-peg kid sister of “Broad City” and “Eighth Grade,” dispenses its turn-of-the-century details — AskJeeves, AIM chat rooms, dial-up modems, “Wazzup?” — with the precision of an “Only ’00s Kids Will Get This” quiz. (Want to feel old? The year 2000 is exactly as long ago now as 1980, the setting of “Freaks and Geeks,” was when that show premiered.)