Himote House

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.

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.

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.