放課後さいころ倶楽部

HOUKAGO SAIKORO CLUB

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
December 19, 2019
LENGTH
24 min

DESCRIPTION

During a beautiful spring day in Kyoto, Aya and Miki follow the student council president Midori to a board game shop. The three students end up discovering a German board game that causes them to realize their shared passion for games. In the coming days, many more board games will be found and played!

(Source: Crunchyroll)

CAST

Miki Takekasa
Saki Miyashita
Aya Takayashiki
Marika Kouno
Midori Oono
Miyu Tomita
Emilia
Mao Ichimichi
Kyouko Maki
Eriko Matsui
Hana Takayashiki
Hisako Toujou
Takeru Kinjou
Takaya Kuroda
Ren Shibusawa
Kotori Koiwai
Shouta Tanoue
Kouhei Amasaki
Ryuuji Yoshioka
Shun Horie
Yuuto Aoshima
Taku Yashiro

EPISODES

Dubbed

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RELATED TO HOUKAGO SAIKORO CLUB

MANGA ComedyHoukago Saikoro Club

REVIEWS

Antimony
65/100
An endearing, if not always exciting, love letter to board games.
Over the last decade in the wake of K-ON!'s massive financial and critical success, many "cute girls doing cute things" manga and anime series have adopted gimmicks, particularly involving school clubs, in an effort to distinguish themselves. In most cases, for better or for worse, the gimmick is just a pretext to get all the characters in one place (this is arguably a major reason for the overwhelming prevalence of high school anime). LIDENFILMS' Houkago Saikoro Club, about an after-school club where a group of girls (and usually a guest or two) play board games, adapted from the manga by Hiroo Nakamichi, is precisely the opposite of this. As a connoisseur of cute anime girls, I was lured into watching an anime that really is about board games, and I hardly mind.

Miki, a shy first-year, and her energetic airhead friend Aya catch another girl, Midori, entering a mysterious building well after curfew hours. What they find is a specialty shop that sell imported (particularly German) board games, nearly all of which are actual copyrighted titles. Midori quickly ropes them into playing, and soon the Dice Club is founded at their high school. Emilia, a German exchange student, is introduced about halfway through the anime series. None of these characters are outstanding but they all receive decent characterization over the course of the series, and more importantly bounce off of each other very well, something which is important when they're actually shown playing board games. The secondary characters also work well in this format, and one of the best episodes features Miki regaining her memories of a bullying incident from when she was a child as she plays a board game with who she thinks was the bully in that incident.

Taken purely as a slice of life anime, Houkago Saikoro Club is average-to-decent in most regards, and at its worst can feel very procedural when characters are explaining the rules of each game featured. But along with an enjoyable, relaxing soundtrack (albeit having one of the most generic OPs ever) Houkago Saikoro Club is ultimately saved by its central theme. Never in any "themed" slice of life anime have I seen an author with the level of passion and knowledge for the topic at hand. Every board game featured (except, of course, the one being developed by Midori, whose aspiring career is followed throughout the course of the anime and helps emphasize the show's passion for its topic) is real, and most of them are fairly niche, at least compared to the big brand name American board games like Monopoly or Sorry!. The show also openly laments the niche status of board games in Japan, particularly in comparison to their relative popularity in Europe. Even if you're not particularly enthusiastic about board games, it's hard not to appreciate the amount of detail placed into the topic at hand. The coverage of the board games themselves, as well as how the main characters interact with each other through these games, makes Houkago Saikoro Club an anime worth watching.

P.S.: Blockus is infuriating.
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Kalladry
65/100
A great introduction to real-life games, lovingly illustrated. Unfortunately, they come with obnoxious characters.
My impression after watching episode 1: this is an interesting premise I want to see more of, with the most annoying characters I would like to see all struck from the face of the earth.

My impression after watching episode 2: I will put up with obnoxious high school girls only so I can see more cool board games.

Premise is simple: two 10th graders discover their classmate works at a small board game store, she teaches them to play a game, and they are introduced to the amazing world of board games, which apparently are not super popular in Japan (or so this should would lead you to believe, no idea if that’s correct or just convenient for the plot).

One of the first things you’ll notice when the game shop is shown for the first time is they’re not just drawing generic boxes. No, they’re beautifully illustrated actual real-life games you could play right now.

A game gets played in every episode–I can honestly say I now want a chance to play Marrakech, a game in episode one that involves strategically moving a rug merchant around and trying to cover more of the board with your rugs than another player’s.

The games are the reason to watch. Each episode is a different game, and no game is played in more than one episode. Also going on my list of games to obtain is Kaker Laken Poker/Cockroach Poker, a card bluffing game, and I’m also interested in playing Incan Gold, a strategy game, and The Island/Survive: Escape from Atlantis, where players try to move pieces off a sinking island.

The games get a basic explanation—probably not enough that I could play right away, but enough that I think I got a decent understanding of whether I’d enjoy the game, at least.
It was also fun spotting games in the shop and wondering if they’d make an appearance (after yelling “PLAY BLOKUS PLAY BLOKUS PLAY THE FRIKKIN BLOKUS” at the beginning of every episode, they did, in fact, finally play the Blokus game I’d seen sitting in the background at the beginning, in episode 10). (I own Blokus. Good game.)

The downside of the show is…the main characters. Blue-haired Miki is terminally shy and I just can’t like her as a character. Pigtailed Aya is a Manic Pixie [Childish] Girl. Rules-loving Midori is pretty inflexible, but is mostly a nice character, actually. But my gosh, are the first two annoying. Later, a part-German girl shows up and I was like is there an epidemic of bad German accents going around this season because FIRST MOMIJI SOHMA and NOW THIS but it turns out they’re voiced by the same American voice actress, so that explains it. But it certainly didn’t help. (Her dad also has a not-super-great German accent, so.)

Verdict

English dub? Yes, and it’s OK. Actually, most of the voices are fine, but blue-haired Miki has a thin, high-pitched voice (that fits her character, but her character is wimpy), and part-German Emmy has the same pseudo-German accent that drove me nuts with Momiji in Fruits Basket. (How nuts? I spent half an hour searching Youtube for actual Germans speaking English just to remind me what it actually sounds like.)

Visuals: Characters a fine, nothing flashy. But the backgrounds are beautiful, and show many real spots around Kyoto, where it’s set (Crunchyroll has a blog post HERE comparing the anime visuals with real spots), and as noted above, the games themselves get beautifully illustrated.

Worth watching? Yes if interested in board games and you can stand a really whiny, wimpy 10th grader. (Miki does improve for at least half the episodes, but she’s often plagued by self-doubt or bad memories that slow everything down.) Even with the obnoxious characters, I don’t regret watching. Plus, it’s only 12 episodes.
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