Kitaku-bu Katsudou Kiroku

If you ask me to give an example of an anime that is a slow-paced slice-of-life school comedy with a full main character cast of girls in a group, you have anime like Lucky Star, Azumanga Daiou, Hidamari Sketch, K-On, Yuru Yuri, and so on. These types of anime, after all, are really popular and it's really hard to deny that.

Kitaku-bu Katsudou Kiroku, or in English, Chronicles of the Going Home Club is one of these anime, which I believe sadly just didn't get popular like the ones I mentioned above. Like I said earlier, this is a slice-of-life school comedy anime that centers ... around the Going Home Club, which is quite ironically named since in Japanese slang, students who are not part of any club usually call themselves members of the "going home club," which just means they go home right after school. But in this anime, the Going Home Club is an actual school club composed of Karin, an ideal Yamato Nadeshiko who everyone loves; Claire, an extremely rich ojou-sama who spends money like water; Botan, a lady who is immersed in humanly impossible martial arts; Sakura, a self-proclaimed normal girl but is president of a clearly not-so-normal club; and of course, Natsuki, our MAIN main character who got dragged into all of this.

Among all of these characters, I would like to give the club's president, Doumyouji Sakura, an extremely special mention. She has that energetic personality that you can find in just about many comedy characters throughout, she carries about 90% of the comedic scenes in the anime, she does her job really well despite being, quote on quote, a normal girl. But what I believe is the best thing about her is her voice, and by extension, her voice actress Miharu Kobayashi. Whenever I hear Sakura's voice acting, I describe her voice as… perfectly average. I don't mean that her voice is in the middle of the pack, but instead, it's perfectly articulated to portray someone average, and that deserves a lot of praise. Whenever I listen to her voice, I feel like I'm hearing a Japanese person speak with real-life intonation, even though I am not a Japanese person and I do not know what real-life Japanese intonation really is. That's just the vibe I'm getting. Because of this reason, I find her voice really endearing, I love it, and it's a REALLY BIG SHAME that Miharu Kobayashi only has this one role, and the only news about her if she continued voice acting is a short anime about anthropomorphized ramen girls. You could argue that her voice wasn't that special, that's why she did not get any more roles, but I disagree on that stance fully. I love her voice acting for Sakura, and I will die on this hill.

The anime's story portrays the members of the club and their various shenanigans, mostly carried by what I would say well-executed exaggeration, especially when it comes to their fourth wall breaks, and the unrealistic things that happen because of their hijinks. For example, in the very first episode, we get two false credits that happen even before the midpoint of the episode, which caught me off guard, and it left me wondering as to why the anime producers even thought to make the characters do those scenes. Then I remember that there were some scenes where the characters were saying that they did not get enough budget, in which the blatant honesty is very hilarious. I guess being able to reuse scenes even for a few seconds saves some budget, and I'm all for it.

Even so, it is balanced by cute, wholesome, and sometimes ridiculous but oddly relatable moments that remind us that despite all of these, they're still a group of friends making the most of their time to socialize and foster their relationships. These make up the identity of this anime as a whole. It sets itself apart from the other anime I mentioned earlier, but at the same time, it fits in the group just fine,

Now let's delve into its opening theme, 2 Gakki Debut Daisakusen! by Otome Shinto, the same idol group that performed Good Job Club's opening theme as well. The opening melodic line alone is very attention-grabbing. It is one of the very few themes that I actually listened to the whole song the very first time I heard of it, in fact, just remembering it makes me want to sing it.

ichigakki ni wa amanjiteta no (I somewhat underestimated my first semester)
CLASS no POSITION nigun no ichi (My position in class was around in the middle)
Honto ha watashi yareba dekiru ko (But I'm actually a capable student)
sukoshi namaketa dake da mon!! (I was just procrastinating a bit)
sorya seiseki mo ALL 3 (san) dashi (But even if my grades are all 3s)
gakuen DRAMA mitai na seishun mo (Even if my youth isn't like those school dramas) —

Once you start, it's quite difficult to stop. It's very energetic throughout, and I actually like the meaning of the lyrics, so that adds to the punch. Then there's the first ending theme that the first episode was hyping for the entirety of the episode, and boy do I tell you, when it finally ran without being stopped prematurely, the song did not disappoint:

Ima shika dekinai koto ga shitai (There's something I want to do that I can only do now)

Okay, let's stop before I go overboard. Overall, the anime's comedy is really executed well, and it's such a big waste to let this series go hidden any longer. Sure, the art isn't too much of a spectacle, that's why I opted not to talk about it, but that should not distract you from the notion that everything else is astounding. The anime isn't deep, but I believe that its characteristics as a comedy anime, especially in its tendencies to casually break walls give it the depth that it needs, and I hope that you'll like it as much as I did. After all, this anime is truly a must watch.

With markedly solid new offerings like Love Lab, Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu and Kiniro Mosaic, the Summer 2013 anime season has really been an excellent showcase of schoolgirl shows. With quality production and interesting hooks those anime all work to reaffirm how much fun the genre can be when done right. They also help to highlight the many failings of the peculiar Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku, the one new schoolgirl series of the season I would not recommend.

Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku is about five high school friends who are part of a club that doesn't really do anything--basically the same premise as Yuru Yuri or Yuyushiki. This ... can be an effective setup, as those shows both proved, but here it's not particularly well executed. The Going Home Club seems ill defined even next to the Amusement Club or the Data Processing Club and mostly just serves as a place for the writers to wring out the next comedic setup. It never feels natural. Yuyushiki got pretty random with its topics, but it made it feel entirely natural through the choice of setup and the brilliant way the characters played off of each other. Here, every setup and punch line feels so very labored.

A big part of the problem is that Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku is not very frequently funny. It tries. It tries really hard actually, but it just falls flat constantly. The timing is off and the jokes often aren't very funny in the first place. One thing it really seems to love a lot is fourth wall jokes; which is fine--they can be quite funny when done well. They're just really not here though and its in part due to the approach. Drawing attention to the fact that your animation budget is small, your writers are dumb and lazy and your show isn't very popular isn't going to hide the fact that its all true. On the contrary, it just highlights the problems for the viewer to scrutinize as they watch.

The anime was produced by the studio Nomad, who looking at their credits, always has been kind of underwhelming, at least from the series of theirs I've seen. Even then Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku really is pretty cheap and generic looking though. The art and animation are substandard. It doesn't fair much better on the sound end either. Music is okay I guess; seems to do what it should and while the opening theme isn't something I'd call particularly great (mostly due to the singers), it does have charm and is peppy enough; the original ending theme is really generic though, but it's quickly replaced by a better song a few episodes in. The big problem with the sound is in the voice acting. The VAs aren't very good. Well, most of them are passable, I suppose, but the voice of the club president has a weird grating quality to it and, more importantly, the main character is miscast and terrible. I usually like tsukkomi characters, but this one just comes across as annoying and shouty in the role--something that absolutely kills any comedy she's supposed to provide.

But what of the characters themselves? Well, they're pretty one note and reductive, reminding me more of the sort of characters you might see in a particularly bad harem anime than something like this. Main character Natsuki is, as said, a tsukkomi, only there to play the straight man to the others and shout about how stupid they are. Karin is a cute airhead. Club president Sakura is energetic in a decidedly generic way. Claire is basically Mugi from K-On! reduced to the dullest core elements. Botan is a kind of weird mix of gamer girl and martial arts girl who is somehow able to do inhuman feats. The show doesn't really bother to ever develop them. Between all the random comedy in Yuyushki, it took the time to develop the characters and make the audience care about their friendship. This show doesn't bother trying to do that. it just presents us with a set of fairly unrealistic, underwritten characters to blather on about whatever the writer wants them to.

Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku just isn't a good anime. With unfunny comedy, flat characters and zero in the way of plot, if it had more in the way of fanservice I expect this is what people who despise this genre entirely think it all is. If you want to watch a schoolgirl show this season, you're best off looking elsewhere. Love Lab is much funnier, Kiniro Mosaic is much cuter, C³-bu is peppered with cool action (and just generally better). As a longtime fan of the genre, the best I can give it is a five, but for others I expect the score might be lower. Not recommended.

Oh the memories..The hate,the pain,the blood running down my comrade's hands,the screams of burning victims as the bombs came down on us like rain,the sweet release of death as our lifeless eyes turned white.

That pretty much sums up everything about CotGHC,so goodbye no........No what are you doing?Why are you dragging me back?Leave me be,don't make me go through this nightmare again please...

Well they said that if i don't write a proper review they'll send me my wife's head in a bag so..

CotGHC then..It's about..Erm..Maybe it has to do something with Japan's school having a ton of clubs for kids to stay out of their parents ... way and kids than don't join one are treated as the plague and nobody loves them and they rot away slowly as time fades and with it fades the empty life of those fucks that stay at home and suck their parents happiness dry.

But because this is Japan they had to think of a shorter name and they went with members of the "Going Home Club"..Which in this anime's case it's an actual club with it's own room and stuff and people can join and it's legal..So Natsuke Andou and Karin Touno decide to join this cult and were ordered to sacrifice a baby seal..But the seal cried and begged for its' life and they couldn't handle the cute seal's tears and ended up making it their mascot.

As for the rest of the cult..Well there's Botan Oohagi who goes around the worlds parks and beats bears to a pulp to prove her martial artistic superiority or something..And no this time i'm not joking.

Then we have Claire Kokonoe,whose family is richer than Elon Musk.She also has a bit of an obsession Karin..I forgot Natsuke who has an antenna for hair,always shouts for some reason and plays the role of the "straight man" in this chaos..Karin is the cute airhead who also cooks and is perfect and all girls want to be with her.

Then there's the cult leader Sakura Domyoji,who wears some enormous red hair ornaments and has so much enthusiasm,one could believe she snorted a kg of cocaine.She founded the cult,which she wanted to be a cult that could be about anything.Unfortunately the cult is about nothing at all in particular.They basically sit around a table and talk about all kinds of uninteresting shit,like why a bird doesn't sing or something like that or why the Demon King is such a wimp.

All in all i think these girls would be better off if they actually DID go home.Apart from some good moments here and there,and i'm being very generous here,and the episode with the word chain(7),this anime has nothing to offer.

My mind keeps returning to a line in the closing song,"Don't think,feel!"..Makes perfect sense cause the more i think about it the more i feel i wanna drink bleach with snake venom in it.