English Dub Review: Chio’s School Road “Thank You George/Mananacchio”

Mananacchio is the greatest thing since “The Macarena.”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Chio’s odyssey this week pushes her to the limit, as she struggles against both biology and the bonds of friendship on her way to school.

In our first little adventure, Chio finds herself need to go the bathroom really, really bad, with urinary immediacy that threatens to destroy her bowels and her sanity. She rushes to a bathroom for safety, but after finishing her business realizes she’s used the boys bathroom by mistake. In desperation, she employs a variety of special abilities and schemes to escape discovery of her crime.

In the episode’s second half, our story focuses on Shinozuka, a disciplinary officer at Chio’s high school, who is sent on patrol on Chio’s normal route to see who’s been the cause of the all the shenanigans on the road lately. While surveying the area, she comes across Chio and Manana making their way up the school. While stealthy investigating them from the shadows, Shinozuka bears witness to their absurd friendship, and ends up learning from them the essence of a true friendship, punctuated by a new and exciting dance called the “Mananacchio.”

Our Take:

Get ready for chuckles, because Chio’s School Road brings the funny, marking a fifth episode of the absurdist series that will bring a smile to your face and a laugh to your belly.

Looking at the first scenario of the episode, Chio’s bathroom balderdash is nothing less than entertaining. Chio tries to escape her fate of being labeled a pervert with every fiber of her being. That desperation and intense struggle are pretty funny to watch, especially when she starts bringing out the special moves to turn the tides in her favor. Her silliness this time around echoes a female “Reigen” from “Mob Psycho 100”, another show that delighted me with its pop culture irreverence. But, I do have to note, that while its absurdity and creativity really butters my eggroll, the jokes are lacking in comedic timing. Things tend to drag on too long, and there was more than a few times when I found something to be less funny because the writing got greedy and tried to buy a few extra seconds of screen time.

In our illustrious second half, we get a story that taps into the very core of the meaning of friendship. Well, at least a little bit, anyway. As always, its fun to see Chio and Manana go at each other, even from someone else’s point of view. Shinozuka offers a different perspective on their fun and games, and it’s nice to see that perspective validated by the end of the episode, with her becoming something of a friend to Chio and Manana. However, I couldn’t help but feel like Shinozuka didn’t really add anything to the humor that wasn’t already present. The jokes are still the same, she just functions as a straight man to provide commentary on things that were already funny. A good joke is something you should never have to explain, but Chio’s School Road doesn’t seem confident enough to go without tooting its own horn a bit after doing something mildly amusing.

The antics this time around reminded me quite a bit of “Nichijou”, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. So far, that seems to be exactly the kind of high school set absurdism this show is going for. While you can definitely tell that it’s trying, results are mixed. The show fires off jokes like a machine gun, but not a lot of the land. It’s about 50/50, and the humor is scattered enough that it doesn’t compound on the shots it does land. Overall, not bad. You’ll have a decent time watching this.