Sleeping On The Bank Job – ‘Chio’s School Road’ Episode 11 Review

What’s the show? Chio’s School Road, Episode 11.

So what happens in this episode? In the previous episode I made an observation that the show was turning away from the broader ‘random’ style of comedy that it first sold itself as and was moving into more focused character driven comedy and this episode pretty much confirms that!

We’re approaching Asobi Asobase levels of reaction faces here!

Okay, we get it, you’re clever and pick up on things—so what actually happens here then? Basically we’ve got two segments, one where Chio has an awkward night of not being able to sleep after a particularly exciting online video-game victory (it’s during a bank heist in a Payday-esque game) and the other where Manana is worried about her body odour. On paper, neither segment seems like it would elicit large amount of laughs and you know what, compared to earlier episodes they don’t, but the character stuff is so good it doesn’t really matter all that much. This is a very different show then the one we started with!

Uh-huh… you know glossing over what happens in the episode in the space of a paragraph and not having much to follow it up with isn’t really conducive to a riveting review… It’s the penultimate episode of a comedy series with next to zero actual plot—you should be surprised I made it this far and managed to make entertaining weekly reviews!

Well that’s debatable… Tch!

I think this is the first time we’ve seen Manana in plain clothes, they really suit her! Better than that school outfit!

So at the risk of this becoming your shortest review ever is there anything you want to talk about? There were some really impressive close-up’s of faces and really detailed animations in this episode–along with some expectedly weaker ones, and it almost felt like some of this episode was handled by a different animation studio? Anyone else get that feeling, or am I just imagining things?

Please answer in the comments below, ahem, anything else? Also, there were so many Chio-chan panty shots this week—not that I’m complaining! I mean she was one of my 10 Best Waifu’s Of Summer 2018 Anime after all!\

Trust you to be commending the quality of panty-shots belonging to an anime high-school girl… I don’t know why I continue to be surprised at your perverseness. One day I’ll be gone and you’ll miss it.

And to think people on Twitter were actually complaining about *this* kind of fan-service, like really?!

Don’t count on it. So overall thoughts on the episode? It was fun—I liked the added character trait they gave to Yuki about her being some absolutely brutal truth-teller even at the expense of seeming completely and utterly callous. But the way she does it in such a smiley way that makes her impossible to hate for it—the “smiling reaper” I think Manana called her. And as I said last week but will reiterate this show works on a different level now that the comedy is more character focused—it’s certainly an adjustment and for some it will be too much of a change but for me I’m very happy with this shows course correction.