Chronicles of the Going Home Club: First Impressions
Streaming Allegiance: Crunchyroll
Reconnaissance Report by: Drake
Progress: Episode 1
While deciding on the anime to cover during the summer 2013 season, I came across the title The Going Home Club. That on its own was reason enough for me to question just what this anime was even about. I was originally expecting a short form anime, where each episode would go about two or three minutes, showing some shenanigans had by club members as they walked home. I was wrong, however, as each episode is the standard twenty minutes or so in length and there wasn’t even any walking home!
Not yet, anyway. After a random beginning about seals and other irrelevant things, we find ourselves following first year high school students Natsuki and Karin going through the chore of picking a new club to join. They both elect to join The Going Home Club, Karin because her interest was piqued the day prior at a Club Recruiting event, but Natsuki does so as more of a joke. Imagine Natsuki’s surprise when she learns the club actually exists and her dismay when she is instantly signed up by its three overly enthusiastic senior club members.
The remainder of the episode is spent trying to figure out what this club’s purpose really is. It really is actually a group of very different girls coming together from various family backgrounds (rich heiress, martial arts heiress, and commoners) and having fun together on the way home from school. So far their activities have been pigeon feeding, getting ice cream cups, cutting soda bottles with secret family martial arts techniques, and tales of fighting bears.
The animation was pretty generic for the genre, and I can only really remember one character’s name and match that to her design. With that crazy ahoge Natsuki has for hair, she is pretty hard to forget. Seriously, imagine Alfalfa’s cow lick from The Little Rascals and exaggerate it by anime standards and you’ve got Natsuki’s hair. I spent half the episode wanting to cut the thing off.
In the end, The Chronicles of the Going Home Club isn’t that exciting or funny yet. I wish it was a series of shorts as that format would fit much better here, given that the activities are all self-contained and episodic with no relation to each other. I’m hoping next week’s episode and future episodes get better for the sake of this anime. Until then, peace out!
Score: 5.00/10.00
