The series opens with High school student Andou Natsuki going in for the opening ceremony. Afterwards she checks out some of the club adverts, the strangest of which is someone flailing around in a seal costume. When asked what club she's going to join she responds by saying that she might just join the going home club, only to find out that it's a real thing when her classmate, Touno Karin, decides to go with her to check it out. From their it goes into the details of the club activities, which seems to consist of doing strange things for fun. The comedy in this is a strange blend of absurdist elements, breaking the fourth wall and jokes about everyday school life. The closest anime I can compare the humour to is Gokujou Seitokai. The humour is strange, can be very random and mostly works pretty effectively. The series has a lot of great moments, particularly the musical chairs bit and the Schubert episode. One thing I really appreciate about the series is that they actually use pop culture things they reference for actual jokes and parody purposes, which shouldn't be surprising but there are a lot of series that just treat the reference as a joke by itself because “this thing exists, it's funny” and that's not only completely lacking in humour but just lazy, (glaring at you, Lucky Star.) A lot of their humour is also based around making fun of really stupid tropes, their gags about fan-service for example. They do have some jokes that don't really work or just fall flat, but those are in the minority.
The characters aren't particularly deep. They're really simple archetypes who don't develop very much with their major defining characteristics played up for comedic effect. I will grant that the characters play off of each other very nicely and the dynamics among them are well handled. They're also used in a very self aware fashion, which helps make them more interesting than they would have been had they been played completely straight.
The art is pretty standard. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it isn't anything special or eye-catching. Save for a few visual gags.
The voice acting in this is well done. Most of the main cast doesn't have a lot of roles outside of this which is a shame since they are quite good. Particularly Senhongi Ayaka, Kobayashi Miharu and Kido Ibuki. The music is fun and they do some really clever things with it.
The ho-yay factor is a 6/10. The girls do get really homo-erotic. Karin and Claire are the ones who get the most screen time, but a lot of the dynamics have heavy homo-erotic undertones.
That's Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku. All in all, I rather enjoyed it. There are a lot of funny moments. The characters play off of each other nicely and the voice acting was good. That being said, it wasn't the best comedy I've ever seen and the art was certainly nothing special. Final rating, 7/10. It's a good little anime, check it out if it sounds like your type of humour. That does it for December. The request queue going into the new year is: Battle Athletes Daiundoukai, Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu, Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge, Shinsekai Yori and One Outs. Next week I'll ignore all of that because it's the beginning of a new year and those of you who have been reading my reviews for a while know what that means. Studio Ghibli month. We'll begin with what some claim is the first Studio Ghibli film and others argue isn't on a technicality, Nausicaa of the valley of the wind.
