Cute anime girls form a board game club. Enough said? Apparently not, I’ve got a full review to do.
Our story stars terminally shy introvert girl Miki Takekasa. She runs into bubbly personified, Aya Takayashiki, and they go on a long rambling walk together, as Miki struggles to understand this thing called “fun”. Eventually they find the straight-laced Class Rep, Midori Ono, apparently out after curfew for visiting places. They stalk her to what turns out to be her part time job at a game store, where the manager is all too eager to introduce his uptight worker’s friends to the joys of board games. Midori even gets into helping Miki out with her first game, and accepts that they could meet up to play again on weekends and holidays, when the school won’t care.
For the most part, this is a show I have to compare to another I’ve reviewed in the past, Dagashi Kashi. Perhaps it’s because both shows are primarily about real products and spend a bit of screen time informing you about them, but they have a fairly similar sort of vibe. Compared to Dagashi Kashi, though, After-school Dice Club eases up on the throttle and takes more time “enjoying the scenery”. Where each episode of Dagashi Kashi typically has two vignettes, each episode of After-school Dice Club typically indulges in one board game, with a good deal more set dressing and character-building.
The rules are explained fairly quickly and concisely, but also reasonably completely, to the point where I feel like I could probably sit down with any of the featured modern games and play them with little extra preamble needed. This probably drove some of the game choices – even with one of the girls holding the box of one of my own favorite board games, Terraforming Mars, while they’re discussing what to play, I kind of knew something that heavy wasn’t going to get picked. The gameplay itself is a little more sparse. In order to get some actual story and character, we’re not forced to sit through entire turn-by-turn plays of modern eurogames, with the focus instead being on critical turns and moments that tell a gaming story.
Along the way, Miki and Midori get a good deal of work. Miki learns to open up to people – in general and over time in a good way, but pointedly in the Incan Gold episode when the extra player for the game of the week is a thuggish and intense girl who Miki initially thinks she might vaguely recognize due to having been bullied in the past, only to find out both that not everyone intense is bad and that this exact girl was more of a bully hunter, who she had vague memories of because she drove off Miki’s tormentors one time.
Midori, on the other hand, wants to become a board game designer. There’s actually an entire episode focused on her dream, where the game played is one that she’s working on (it still needs some help, apparently, though I can see similarities between what Midori has produced and titles like Race for the Galaxy or Chez Geek in the first iteration at least). Through the cycle of playtesting and receiving some very harshly-worded advice from a visiting American board game designer (a friend of her manager’s), Midori learns to face criticism and improve herself.
Aya, meanwhile, remains a cute and high-energy goober who pretty much always comes in last, presumably because her thinking ahead is very limited, but seems to have a blast doing it anyway.
Shortly after the halfway point we’re properly introduced to a fourth girl, Emmy. A transfer student from Germany, her dad runs a board game cafe and she’s all too eager to meet some peer players in the game-starved land of Japan.
You know, something that strikes me as odd is that much is made of Japan having a very underdeveloped board game culture in this show, with shade thrown on the prospects for game stores or cafes and mention of a dearth of native designers. I get that Japan isn’t exactly on Germany’s level, but I own quite a few board games of Japanese origin, and I don’t think a strong import and localization industry would be founded on the back of nothing. Ah, well, chalk it up to the writers wanting things to feel more special.
As the show goes on, we get more focus on the characters and their stories, sometimes resulting in two-game episodes that feel a little more like Dagashi Kashi than the show already did. Even Aya gets some time in the limelight, patching things over with her chronic absentee dad. As much as there is one though, the main thread follows the fact that Emmy, like Midori, wants to design board games. This sees her get her game into shape in order to submit to a contest held by that designer who tried (harshly or no) to guide her earlier.
The last episode, following the finishing touches, sees that she didn’t win the contest, but gets some careful words from the designer, effectively inviting her to America to study under his team. Emmy, meanwhile, has a game of her own in the works, and hopes to show it to a publisher when she visits Germany.
Even Aya, it seems, has plans for the future (though hers are about as scattered as you’d expect), which makes Miki sad as she thinks that she’s stuck standing still, and fears that all her friends will leave her. She gets down in the dumps for a while until everyone finds her, they play a game together (of course) and resolve that, if they’re going to be in different classes, they might as well start a proper board game club!
Thus, the curtain falls on our little slice of life, leaving us wanting nothing more than more board games.
I’ll be honest, I think the show was strongest when it was board games with a character side. Midori’s episodes and the finale were still good, but we watch to see everybody play together, because if the number of streams and such that can be found are any indication, board games are fascinating even if you’re just watching.
That said, we did get quite a few games in a level of detail that was good for the show – enough to follow, but not so much that it overwhelms the fact that this is a half-hour-per-episode series that’s trying to tell a story.
I wish there were more to say about it, but this is a Slice of Life show. I could go through the games that the girls play in each episode, but to an extent I don’t see a point in that. Instead, I’ll just move to grading it: a very comfortable B. If you like board games, or even if you’re just a little curious about them and like watching cute girls in slice of life, I think this show will be one that makes you happy. It may not leave a lasting impact, but it will at least be pleasant time spent.
Until next time… play more games?