After School Dice Club is one of those anime that I didn't hate, but at the same time I found myself slowly losing interest as the longer it went on for. Not enough to stop watching it as I try not to drop anime but enough to feel like each episode felt like a slog to get through sometimes.
The main premise of this anime is helping an introverted girl who doesn't feel like she can fit in with anyone, by playing board games with her new friends that she's meeting along the way (Basically she was adopted by an extrovert) Each episode will have them do something be it go to a water park, or just hang out with each other. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, the main gripe I had with watching this was the board games which was the entire point of the show. I felt increasingly bored and not caring when the game started and found myself either putting ASDC on 2x speed (which I have never done that video any video before) or skipping the segment completely because after a while they felt so dull to watch. The animators could have made it more visually appealing like visualizing the girls in the game itself or something like that but they chose to just have them playing normally. It's not even games you know or well established ones so half the time you don't understand what is going on. For the first few episodes I didn't mind it, but around episode 5 is when I just didn't care anymore for the games. Only 1 more after that I ended up watching the game in full (forgot which one)
The main interesting points of this anime came from... well pretty much everything else. The plot with Miki was just ok. Just your typical girl that got bullied and felt alone until she gets friends. Nothing special. I did find the final episode interesting with her feeling upset because she feels like she's losing her friends because they want to go separate paths in their future careers, I feel like that was a nice touch that I haven't seen touched upon in anime that much.
The art style of the show was beautiful, the characters were lively, none of the characters stood out as unlikable really with the exception of the pink haired girl Ren. I found her to be pretty annoying, fortunately you didn't see her much and she wasn't ever really a main focus other than 1 episode. I really enjoyed the German student that joined the group. I can't speak for the English subbed version as I watched it dubbed but I loved her voice and her personality. My favorite episode was the Christmas episode which I'm slightly biased towards because 9 times out of 10 they primarily are my favorite.
Overall, I don't think the anime was bad, but it's one of those anime I'd never want to re watch and if season 2 dropped I just wouldn't watch it as it just wasn't super interesting. It was just bland for the most part. I feel like it isn't the animators fault because an anime focused around board games is a tough thing to make interesting but I feel like they did good never the less.
5/10