Himote House

So, Himote House, I call it "the most underrated anime of the autumn 2018 anime season"

This anime is complete shit, but lets wait for a second here, is it really shit? You look at it, and you see something completely new, a 3D animated SLICE OF LIFE. Who the fuck thought of that idea? Why would you ever make slife of life into 3D, especially when the animation is made by a single person. The first 3 episodes just show, it should'nt have been. But, this Comedy slice of life gets a lot better then you look at how bad the animation is.

As expected, ... the animation is shit and doesn't fit at all. However, thats where the anime shines
The animation is LAUGHABLY bad and honestly it makes it a must watch. The opening is one of the funniest things I have ever seen and the talking animations are just, holy shit.

Quick plot summary, 5 girls move together and have different powers, cause why not? As of the 3rd episode they havent done much else than talk about their love lives and try to open up a sealed glass. Some of the best from the voice actors is the ad-lib at the end of each episodes, it is completely non-sensical, but it is certaintly great.

This anime is a 4-fun anime, it looks like the producers and voice actors had a lot of fun making it and it wouldnt surprise me if they are laughing their asses off from watching it and just thought "lets just air this" because yes, it is definetly worth a watch to see how 3D animation shouldn't be handled, but it is still an enjoyable watch because of the laughably bad animation.

One episode in and this anime has utterly baffled me. I watched it upon being advised *not* to watch it by a friend, just to prove them wrong. As an aficionado of "shows so bad they are good," I figured, could it really be that bad?

Boy, did I find a hidden treasure here! The animation is nearly all-CGI, with eyes that are soulless and unchanging. The mouths move just enough to let you know they are mouths and not gaping wounds in the character faces.

The audio is the kind used for childrens' shows, with CONSTANT dialogue and cartoon sound effects, almost never giving a moment's ... pause to ponder the implications of what you just saw. This may be even more grating than the animation to some.

With all that obvious bad out of the way...the good are the hilariously unique characters. The main character, Tae Hongou, is an effervescent and carefree woman, nonplussed by the peculiar personalities of those around her. She serves a solid combination role of both being the audience surrogate, as well as the driving force for the story itself.

The ensemble of other characters should offer a few familiar tropes, but mixed in with a new zany factor of "powers" and the aforementioned personalities that is sure to lead to fun!

And that's just the first episode! Episode two and three have taken things to whole other levels, and the show has consistently improved from episode one!

All in all, I can't wait to see how much further this madness continues, and I can do nothing less but recommend it to other masochists. Cheers!

To start, Himote House off the bat looks pretty bad. I have to admit that I was in that same boat. I mean, the score is pretty far down there and if you are turned off by CGI, then your opinion may be influenced by those factors. I think, however, there is more this show has to offer that has made it enjoyable to watch.

The show is a non-episodic comedy about 5 girls and a cat who all live together in a shared house. They put on silly gags that might leave you asking, “What did I just watch?” at the end of the episode. ... At first, I hated this feeling. I am not generally the biggest fan of predominantly comedic anime (Asobi Asobase and Grand Blue in example from this year), but this one struck me a bit different. The silly gags weren’t all that amazing (although there were a few that I really enjoyed), but they had improv sections at the end. These improv bits had me rolling every time. I explained it to one of my friends that I felt like I was listenining to a podcast or something of the like. This is a take I don’t see a lot in anime and I think it ended up working out well for them. That was probably my biggest hook.

The characters all had different traits that attributed well to one another, but didn’t really make any of them stand out which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This allowed the focus of the show to be on the comedic value that was set in place rather than the characters. It would have been a lot harder to pull something like that off if the show weren’t a short and if it were episodic. They definitely made a good choice in that department so there is some credit due there.

As I mentioned earlier, it is CGI so I don’t need to say much on the animation of this. I think it is definitely lower quality CGI than what I would come to expect in 2018. It reminded me of my first reactions of Kemono Friends. I almost just wanted to stop watching, but I got over that and continued to watch (and no regrets). I am not sure of the budget of this show or what exactly went on when the show was initially created or if it had any similar problems to Kemono Friends, but I think it worked out if you look past the CGI. If it means anything to get recovery points, in the ending, they have 2D animations often with references to other anime. I think they are very well drawn and I enjoyed seeing them every episode.

I’d like to end with some of the music. As they are ten minute shorts, there isn’t a lot of music that goes into them, but I enjoy what there is. We can take a look at the OP, the main theme of the show, and the ED. The OP doesn’t really stand out to me but it certainly isn’t bad. It is a pretty lax song that helps set the mood of the show being pretty laid back and funny. The main theme usually plays at the start of the first gag of the episode and it is pretty fun and it reminds me of Sublime’s Santeria. The ED has two versions: the one with words and without words. Most of the time, the ED is in the no words form which is just a piano. It is a relaxing way to end the show. They use the vocal version after one of the more powerful episodes in the show and it felt so right. After listening to the full version, I can’t help but to love it a bunch. If you get a chance and you like the piano version, I would recommend finding the full version somewhere.

Verdict: If you are in for a few good laughs from something that is a bit different in the genre, I would advise keeping an open mind and looking past the CGI to get good enjoyment out of this show. I would love more.

I'm writing this review because I feel that most of the hate towards this show is from people who may have missed the point. This isn't some cutesy, slice of life, girls-doing-cute-thing show, this is pure absurdist humour that doesn't remotely take itself seriously.

I'm going to be honest with you, halfway through the first episode I was ready to drop it faster than you can say 'what the f**k is this crap'. It felt like a cheap, rushed knock off of the previously mentioned genres. I spent six or so minutes wondering what the hell I had sat down to watch and then it hit ... me. That's the point. It's a ridiculous, manic and over the top version of those shows.

Yeah the art style isn't great but the voice acting is good and the OP is enjoyable. I particularly like the little skit they have at the end of each episode that doesn't feel scripted, more like seiyuus were just having fun improvising.

Is it an amazing show? No, not really. But it is a short, fun dose of silliness.

As a recent but devoted follower of this creative team, it’s been quite an experience watching the Crunchyroll community reacting to Himote House in real time. CR’s simulcast (and its delightful key visual) attracted a wave of unprecedented attention towards this strange little show - one that left a violent wake of criticism, endless comments about ‘lazy writing’ and ‘godawful CGI.’ Even the other positive reviews on MAL so far are couched in the self-effacing language of ‘so bad it’s good.’ While this is expected, it’s honestly kind of heartbreaking. I think Himote House is thoroughly misunderstood, and I want to do my best here ... to not so much /review/ it, but to clear up some misconceptions the average viewer might have about it that will hinder them from enjoying it for the charming goofball comedy that it is.

THIS SHOW DOES NOT SHARE YOUR VALUES. This is the key insight I have to offer. I’ve put it near the top in shouty capitals, it's that important. I’ll say it again. This show, and really what I mean is this production team, does not care about the things that the General Western Anime-Watching Audience (GWAWA for short) cares about. The majority of comments on Himote House’s (HH) debut were about the cheap CGI animation (which, if you’ve watched the rest of Studio Bouncy’s catalogue, is actually looking better than ever). Among the many beefs I have with GWAWA, predominant is the persistent conflation of budget and quality. Criticism, in its most literal sense, is obviously warranted, but I get the impression time and again that GWAWA will stop engaging with a show as soon as the animation drops below some arbitrary level of pizazz. How many needless comments about Budget™ plague well-meaning shows made without the finances of Shaft? How many GWAWA made those same snide remarks over Kill la Kill during shots that intentionally dropped detail for effect? It’s a fixation that not only detracts from the potential for enjoyment of any given work, but actively fosters hostility to independent productions. Creativity so often comes from constraint - if you’re only going to watch shows with a AAA budget, you’re going to miss out on a damn lot of thought-provoking, interesting and challenging anime.

Mind you, it’s a valid question whether Studio Bouncy has no budget or just doesn’t care about one. Why should they? Their shows are not at all based on visuals - they are pure comedies, equal parts manzai and improv. The beating heart of the show is its voice actresses, and when you have six of the funniest seiyuus around ad libbing about worn-out panties and philosophy, what need is there for flashy artwork? As long as the models are expressive enough to convey the beats and punchlines. Most of these shows would even work just as well as live stand-up sets - and here I’ll bring up the tragically underrated Mahou Shoujo? Naria Girls, in which the seiyuus *actually did improvise live* to Whose Line-style cues, and had their actions motion-captured into MikuMikuDance. The result is a level of jank so ridiculous it only adds to the already absurd improv comedy underneath it; and, predictably, one of the lowest MAL ratings I’ve encountered.

The improv sections, traditionally announced by the toll of a bell, seem to confound many viewers who comment about the “extremely loose script.” It’s an easy mistake to make - it’s so unexpected, it might be hard to think of it is as intentional. As a fan of live comedy, these parts delight me to no end. At times the framework of the show’s ‘story’ and characters feels like a concession to expectations, merely a setting to allow for the ad-lib segments. Live and unruly comedy is another core value of this team: not only is improv a component in all of their scripted shows, they’ve even delved into fully live-broadcast anime (again using mo-cap and MMD models) with the exceptionally batshit Minarai Diva and Chokkan x Algorhythm. (But that’s a review for another time and place.)

It baffles me that the same GWAWA that lauded Pop Team Epic for its surreal humour and intentionally cheap aesthetic are now so enraged by Himote House doing something similar. I understand that this is a style that can take some getting used to; my first encounter with Naria Girls was extremely cynical, and I thought I’d found something truly awful. But by the second episode, the gleeful abandon of the production team became self-evident, and I could appreciate it for what it is: just a bunch of comedians f**king around. I hope that any GWAWA reading this as they cautiously approach HH can do the same - let down your guard! Hang up your hang-ups! Remember that your value set is not an objective measure of anything. You will constantly encounter art that challenges you, but it won’t always be Deeply Serious Art - you can be challenged by fun.

This, too, is philosophy.

Tokiyo Himote is a secretly part of the Brando family!!!

No seriously though Himote House is more an ad-lib anime than an anime of where cute girls have superpowers.

Himote House follows Tae Hongou voiced by Aya Suzaki who's friends and has moved in with Kokoro Himote voiced by Satomi Akesaka, the youngest of the Himote sisters and well Tae gets acclimated into Kokoro's house but with Kinami voiced by Suzuko Mimori, the middle of the Himote sisters and Tokiyo voiced by Kaoru Mizuhara, the oldest of the Himote sisters and finally one of Kokor's friends Minamo Arai voiced by Sumire Uesaka and a talking cat voiced ... by Asuka Nishi and all of them cept the cat have superpowers. But like LA said, this anime is more ad-lib than about the actual premise LA layed out and guess what the ad-libbing part of this anime short is the best part of it and oddly enough the anime short seemed to quickly know this as the anime short becomes nothing but the voice actors still in characters ad-libbing with funny literal of the "top of the bag" scenarios.

Himote House DOES have some scripted scenarios for the actual characters themselves just to loosely flesh out each character and whatnot with some absurdist comedic moments to go along with it but seriously the best parts of Himote House comes with it's "Himote House Competition" ad-libbing and general ad-libbing where LA clearly sees that the voice actors are having fun with the obviously weird premise each of the "out of the bag" scenarios and the voice actors line of thinking lead into, heck they even reference Bitcoin, Youtube and the freakin' TPP of all things and with how natural the voice acting is and considering it was all ad-libbed, of course it sounds natural especially with the voice actors constantly stumbling and laughing like crazy with some of the weird conversations the cast does and LA loves this kind of semi-meta humor from the voice actors because of that.

Sure Himote House's animation done by Bouncy, well it's 3DCGI use was jarring and low quality but in getting the voice actor's inflictions and characters reactions were decent enough and at least they kept the entire anime short entirely 3DCGI instead of trying to switch between traditional and CGI.

The voice acting department, well what can LA say, this is a first where LA has seen voice actors outright stay in their character roles but it's more the voice actor's personality shining through. It was a bit hard to get used to Kaoru Mizuhara's elongated inflictions as Tokiyo as Kaoru herself doesn't have this cadence when speaking normally through ad-libbing. But if LA had to pinpoint a MVP...then...Suzuko Mimori for how much crazy range, both ad-libbing and character-wise she was.

Himote House also has some small segments where the talking cat Enishi has a segment where it seems from the audio that Asuka Nishi along with one other voice actor actually goes Japanese locations and just does stuff there...

LA can't hate Himote House and for a person largely following voice actors, this anime short was a refreshingly absurdist look at ab-libbing taken anime form, with a brilliant voice cast without a care in the world and LA says this in a good way, sure the animation especially the 3DCGI is jarring but it's the voice acting that is it's main strength and shining point of this anime short.

Want to see voice actors cracking up laughing over the silliest premise...then go into Himote House.

[spoilers for the first episode only]


"CG Anime! Oh noes!!" (lol i'm not that good at sarcasm)

Okay, sure, we still prefer our good 'ol 2D beauties but let's not judge here, alright?

And besides, at least it's a full-on CG anime... and not a crappy-2D-that-suddenly-gets-a-crappy-out-of-place-CG

Also, I'm a girl that watches RWBY (speaking, it has a new season *cries* so many anime, so little timeeee), therefore I'm more open-handed and accepting when it comes to this style of animation.
...
So yeah, Himote House... it's about the lives of 5 girls (and a talking cat) living within the same dormitory which Tae-chan, a newcomer in the household, straight-out named it Himote House, because why not?


I watched the first episode and in the early first half of the episode I was like "Oh, just another girl that arrives in a dorm where she meets new friends" then the latter half of the episode happened and my face went "WTF am I watching?! Why did you show each other's panties? You just met today!!" "Powers, what? WTF, ENERGY BEAM! Oh, a talking cat! How nice! WTF you just did a KAGEBUNSHIN NO JUTSU!!"

And then I went ahead and watched all available episodes...

...aand yah know, despite all its weirdness (which is exemplified by the animation style and a sprinkle of magical influence), it's a pretty chill show that shows the daily lives of 5 people and their interactions and antics.

To be honest, it's very refreshing and I'm glad of the decision of making it full CG because it fits the chill, nonchalant 'i-don't-give-a-crap' atmosphere that Himote House has (heck, the opening song fits this anime so well <3)


They have an episodic format where they:

- talk about a certain topic during the day
- they apply/test out whatever the heck they learned 'till sun goes down
- night comes, and they do a "queen of the *insert random thing*" and they each take turns of doing the thing. (ex. queen of metal voice, each character holds out their phone and sing as raspy as possible, then the most hilarious one wins, i guess, since they don't really announce the winner because we only see them laugh and the animation fades out into their house and into the night sky, then cue the ED song... which is only instrumental but still nice to listen to.)


And by following this format, Himote House created a chill, yet amusing, show that is easily watchable (its only 12 minutes long per episode).


So yeah! Give this show some slack and enjoy what it offers! At least watch the first two episodes and you'll see what I mean by "chill, yet amusing".


8/10

Himote House was a fairly intriguing show with many obvious glaring issues thinking back on the show now. The show had one of the dumbest first episodes in which they try to introduce some semblance of a premise or reason for why the main characters get together. I knew before watching the anime that it would be a comedic short so I wasn't expecting the strongest story but even then, the way that they went about the set-up for the comedic moments was chaotic and often not in a good way.
The art was just as bad, with the bland CGI character models along with the ... way they animated, made it feel like I was watching something with low effort put behind it.
The soundtrack was okay but very forgettable at times. However I remember feeling like the use of sound effects when it came to the comedy was decent.
The shining light as far as I'm concerned in regard to Himote House, is the characters or more specifically the seiyuu behind the characters. They brought life to the show when it might have been very easy to write it off as having none at all. They shone especially well in the segments of the show that felt like it was unscripted. This lent itself well with the apparent chaos of the show and served to make the comedy more enjoyable despite the faults of the show.
In conclusion, Himote House is not a show I can recommend because of how bad some aspects of the show is, however the great seiyuu along with the short run time, makes it a more palatable watch.

Who greenlit Tokiyo's voice? It's like when you ask your friend to do an impression and they make a total mockery of the voice - fine for the short term, but having to listen to such an annoying voice for the entire series??? What the hell is that cadence, it's like the voice actress phoned it in after having just woken up with a lazy groggy voice and decided to run with it.

When she ad-libs at the end of episode you can hear her natural cadence which is much more pleasing, so why the hell did she choose such an ear-wrenching voice on the ... main show.

While the casual conversations are somewhat interesting, some episodes are lacking, for example the baseball episode was pretty boring. If you're learning japanese, this might be a good watch because it feels like an actual conversation instead of anime dialogue. Other than that, it's not worth putting up with Tokiyo's horrible voice.