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.