What They Say:
The Going Home Club is a school club whose members’ only goal is to find out how much fun they can have after school. Setting aside the question of whether it is actually recognized by the school, the girls in the club are busy nourishing their utterly off-topic discussions again today.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Known as Kitakubu Katsudō Kiroku in Japanese, Chronicles of the Going Home Club is a jew series based off of the manga by kuroha, which has had two volumes released since its debut back in 2011 on Gangan Online for Square Enix. The anime adaptation is being done by Nomad and is pretty much what you’d expect from the title as it’s focused on cute girls that don’t get involved in anything and just talk about whatever springs to mind. These kinds of shows have been popular for a few years now at least and it’s no surprise when we get a new one each season or so. So it comes down to how interesting they can make the girls and if there’s a good enough gimmick. This one starts off with some plain silliness, but also a desire from myself (and I’m sure others) to cut Natsuki’s massive cowlick/antenna hair bit before anything else with the show can go forward.
With the show following a few different girls that are now in high school, we get to see how some of them have decided that instead of just doing what they did in middle school for clubs, they’re instead going to become part of the Going Home Club, which just means they have no clubs and go home and do what they want. Since most kids do at least one club, there aren’t many that avoid all clubs and that makes for a small kind of club itself in a way. The show has the two new students, Natsuki and Karin, making their application to the club, which has its array of unusual members such as the daughter of the president of a family corporation named Botan, an outgoing blonde named Sakura and a seemingly normal girl named Claire. With these three members having done this for a bit, they’ve got a decent weird dynamic about them that’s pretty overwhelming for the first years, but you can see they’re pretty welcoming which is cute.
While the show runs with a few gags about ending the show early (which does say to me that it would work better as a short form series), we get to see the gang doing things together since Sakura is insistent that life passes you by if you do nothing. Nut they don’t exactly do a lot of things that are all that engaging, though they have fun at the park, showing how to slice open a soda bottle and more. As it goes on, it has its surreal moments as progresses and we get some cute stories, especially it gets into the game brain segment, but mostly it’s just a lot of random silliness in small chunks to keep it from being just one long run on sentence in essence.
In Summary:
With mediocre animation at best and less than engaging character designs, Chronicles of the Going Home Club is pretty much an adventure in being average. There are cute moments to be had at times and like any show it actually has potential, but also like many anime series it simply won’t go beyond what it sets here. Though each episode will obviously be different in what it does as it tackles the various characters and configurations, it’s easy to see a series that won’t stretch itself or do anything that will actually change the group dynamic. Between this and the animation style, which almost feels like it should have been a web show, there’s not a heck of a lot to really latch onto here other than something that’s just light and fluffy. Provided Natsuki’s hair doesn’t drive you over the edge.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
