Himote House

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.

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.

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.