Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 11 (Fin) – Awakening

The schools sports and cultural clubs all defy the StuCo and meet with the members of the former Hero Club to lend them their support and to ask for assistance in the shadows. Everyone probably overdoes it with the disguises—not sure what’s going on with the black klansmen-looking dudes—but both school and town have spoken: they were better off with the Hero Club, and more than willing to accept their eccentricities in exchange for their hard work and kindness.

When the recent string of thefts and attacks leads to the postponement of visits by prospective students, the StuCo can no longer hold the Hero Club back, and they know it. Like astronauts marching towards their rockey, the heroes led by Mizuki approach the StuCo president and voice their intentions to do something. Having done next to nothing except ban their club, the prez can only let them pass.

That night the heroes stake out the location of the attacks, and find an iguana, Faust, and Benjamin, but also a fourth animal: a penguin that has escaped from the zoo. They chase it to the pool, where it has an advantage, and that’s when Mizuki decides to finally “awaken” and join forces with Yamato to unleash the half-drowned Touga’s ultimate attack. What’s described later as a freak meteorological phenomenon occurs, and the penguin is secured by the student who, as it happens, stole food and supplies to keep it happy.

The StuCo president publicly praises the heroes for their services to the school in an assembly, but they want something more than a fancy certificate of gratitude: they want their club room back, and the voices of the assembled student body demand the reinstatement of the club. Thus cornered, the president acquiesces to the will of the people (one wonders where the adults are in all of this…?)

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy was a quaint, lighthearted, fun and charming little show about a group of weirdo boys who are actually good people (imagine that!) and a girl who, while reluctant to be associated with them at first, is now proud to call herself a member of the Hero Club. Not much more to say about it. I enjoyed it!

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 10 – Creating a Vacuum

As expected, the StuCo takes one final infraction as an excuse to shut the Hero Club down. Locking up their clubroom and banning them from helping people inside or outside school, on pain of expulsion. That infraction? Allowing a non-student in “Setsuna Kirito” on school grounds during the festival.

Mizuki might’ve had a chance to clear things up, but to do so would’ve meant breaking her promise to keep Futaba’s alter-ego a secret. Besides, they would have found another excuse anyway. With the club shuttered, Sekiya is attacked by an unknown entity, while a rash of thefts are perpetrated at school.

Mysterious thefts and assaults aside, killing the Hero Club was extremely short-sighted (which I guess becomes the StuCo, all of whom wear glasses): all of the school clubs they helped out relied on them being around, and now they’re all in big pinches.

As their normie emissary, Mizuki is the one who has to hear from these parties about how unfortunate it is, but while there’s talk of them giving the StuCo a piece of their minds, that doesn’t take place here, and the other Hero Club members mostly go off and do their own thing, albiet badly because they’re depressed about losing their meeting place and mandate.

It’s just as bad outside of school, as Mizuki has to turn down a girl who loved Tomoki’s Sora-chan performance and wants him for another one. The elderly folks who the Hero Club helped blame themselves for relying too much and getting them in trouble, which Mizuki has to reassure them isn’t the case.

Whether in or outside of school, the Hero Club was a vital resource whose importance belied the eccentricity of its members. Disbanding them left a huge void in the fabric of both school and community. After partnering with Mizuki and a member drama club to help out the Sora-chan girl, Nanako assures Mizuki that together they’ll find a way to rescue the Hero Club from the StuCo unjust and reckless judgment.

They certainly have public opinion in their favor. As for the mysterious culprit of the assault and thefts, that’s something the StuCo seems incpable of solving. They may have no choice but to rely on the rule-breaking weirdos they loathe.

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 09 – Saved by Setsuna

When Mizuki gets a break from serving at her class cafe, Rei asks if she wants to wander around with him, but Futaba hijacks the opportunity by tagging along so the three can scout the competition. That includes Kazuhiro’s class’ haunted house, which wigs Rei out to no end. They then help the drama club hand out flyers advertising the impending play.

When the play is about to start, Sekiya takes the outdoor stage and poaches their audience, breaking the rules in the process. Futaba turns the tables by appearing on the screen behind them as the web-famous Setsuna Kirito, who urges everyone to head to the gym for the performance, which they all dutifully do.

The crowds are charmed by the cross-dressing princesses, as expected, but when there’s a sudden blackout, instigated by Futaba, they must call upon the audience to light the stage with their phones and help defeat the witch. A fun time is had by all (except Sekiya, who is punished with wood-chopping duty) and the drama club wins the competition, meaning they won’t be shut down buy StuCo.

That night at the bonfire, Futaba confesses he’s a full-fledged otaku, and vows not to hide it anymore, though that costs him a dance with two girls who like him.

Rei asks Mizuki to join him in the folk dance, but again she’s distracted by another friend. Perhaps she’s hung out with these attractive weirdo boys so long, she’s oblivious to the fact that one of them wants to spend more time with her and only her. With only two episodes left and the hero club’s future still in doubt, it’s unlikely that will change.

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 08 – God is in…The Horse?

When no new requests for help were coming into the Hero Club, I assumed that the StuCo had finally commenced implementation of their plan to bring the club down. But then the Drama Club bursts in and begs the club for help so that their club won’t get shuttered by the StuCo.

They present their request as you’d expect a drama club to do so: dramatically, demonstrating a lot of shared qualities with the Hero Club members. The Drama nerds clearly see that potential too, and so have big plans for them.

While the Drama Club runs into a few snags—Kazuhiro won’t run, Yamato can’t remember his lines, and Futaba refuses to take the stage—they mitigate these problems as they come, and before long the operation is a well-oiled machine.

The Drama Club prez even manages to get Rei to believe the “prince’s horse” is an absolutely vital role! Mizuki also discovers that Futaba may have a side-hobby of posting videos in which he performs songs…rather uniquely, but doesn’t immediately put two and two together (another sign of anime-vision).

Throughout all of this, I was wondering where the StuCo was…they’ve been stalking the Hero Club all this time. Were they the ones who created this situation for the Drama Club; in order to keep the Hero Club busy on campus so they’d do less damage off it? We will see.

Then there’s the odd emergency of the wrecked scenery with one day left. A group of cats is blamed for the damage, and Futaba pulls everyone together and makes new scenery, so I’m not sure what the point of the emergency was! With three episodes left, I imagine the final showdown with StuCo will take place in the final episode or two. Until then, there’s a show to put on!

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 07 – Girl on the Inside

All Hijiri Mizuki has wanted to do is live her school life in peace, which is why, she still hasn’t considered herself a true member of the Hero Club (and rejects the nickname Pink). But when pressed by Nanako, she admits she’s enjoying it.

Because she enjoys it; because, for all of the boys’ outbursts, it has become a part of her peaceful school life, she doesn’t quite feel right when the StuCo brings her in and starts disparaging the club and threatening to disband it.

The StuCo recognizes Mizuki as someone they can potentially use to keep the Hero Club in line as the cultural festival looms, and she is all too happy to be that person, since they are at least in agreement the club could stand to be less rowdy.

To this end, Mizuki takes charge of managing the club’s job requests, and splits the members up to take on jobs that are not only best suited to their skills, but will also create the least disturbance. In this way, Mizuki is trying to find the happy medium between unchecked chaos and the club being shut down. Where the most outbursty member Yamato is concerned, she uses her hero tickets to keep him in line—which doesn’t seem tenable.

Even so, keeping the peace proves difficult, as even tutoring upperclassmen, Kazuhiro is going to do his thing, while Futaba causes a disturbance by dint of being so popular with the ladies. The StuCo is watching, and appreciates Mizuki’s efforts, urging her to keep it up.

Keeping Yamato out of trouble inevitably means putting herself in same, as she ends up in an off-limits pond filled with aggressive carp. She saves Benjamin the Cat, but ends up in the drink herself. Thankfully, the other club members learned of her whereabouts and arrived en masse to rescue him, led by Yamato, proving his worth as a legit hero when needed.

Mizuki is so happy she’s in tears, and likely feels a bit bad considering she was working against Yamato all this time. But even that isn’t enough to satisfy the StuCo, who considers it unacceptable for the club to be trespassing regardless of context, and begins preparing to bring the club down. After trying to work with the StuCo, I imagine Mizuki will fight to stop their plans…and she won’t have to fight alone!

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 06 – Stick to Sports

Like a theme park, a school Sports Day provides multiple opportunities to showcase many a funny situation involving members of the Hero Club. In this case, the sports-oriented Yamato takes the lead, as he’s on the committee and thus gets to assign chuuni-like names to all of the events, as well as make the very spirited signage. He also makes sure the other members are in top shape…even for an event they’re not participating in, like tug-of-war. His enthusiasm for sitting on nothing is to be commended.

Yamato proves the fastest runner in all events, and even when he gets hung up on the “found item” part of a race, he ends up taking Mizuki by the hand, likely causing her to wonder if she’s strayed into a shoujo anime. Turns out she’s his favorite…name, as Hijiri is rare. Whether it’s Tomoki winning the bread-snatching thanks to Sora-branded bread, Futaba not having his guitar when he needs it most, or Kazuhiro getting really into the cavalry battle, everyone has something to do, and it’s all entertaining.

That brings us to the three four-eyes who have been shadowing the club all along. Turns out they’re not rivals, but the Student Council (I should have realized that), who are concerned that the Hero Club is an out-of-control public disturbance both on and off campus. Sports Day does nothing to alleviate their concerns, so you can bet the Hero Club’s existence to be threatened in due time…just when, despite herself, Mizuki is coming to enjoy being a part of it…

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 05 – Chuunibyou Brilliant Park

It’s summer vacation, and Mizuki is glad to be away from the hero club and free to work on her true love: jigsaw puzzles. I’m glad we finally get to see her be as passionate about something—she even puts her hand on her face in a chuuni-ish manner similar to the others!

She longs for a 10,000-piece puzzle she can really dive into, but they’re expensive. Enter a call from Kei, who summons the Hero Club for a job. A summer cold has created numerous absences at the theme park where Kei’s big sister works. Since she has a hold on Kei, he makes him reach out to his friends to fill in for a day.

As the Hero Club members take their positions around the park, amusing situations ensue, as expected. I don’t ask much of a comedy beyond making me laugh, and CGB did that often this week.

Whether it was watching Yamato go off-script at the “Blasto Rangers” live hero show, Touga and Futaba providing entertainment as well as food service, or Kei slowly going mad at the constant stream of “Meow Meow Trains,” everyone has something to do, and none of them compromise their quirks whilst doing the jobs they’ve been given.

Nowhere is that more evident than Tomoki’s job at the lost child center. With his encyclopedic knowledge of Sora-chan (who is, after all, an idol for kids), he’s able to put sad and crying little ones at ease while their parents are tracked down. He unexpectedly gets a shot at the Big Time when the cool grizzled vet under the Sora-chan mascot mask tweaks his back, and trusts Tomoki to take the stage in his stead.

While he makes a rookie mistake of treading on the wire providing the piped-in voice and music, one of the lost girls he interacted with (and who called him “Sora-chan-san”, which is delightful) starts to sing, and the others join in to help Sora-chan out. Everyone has fun and gets paid, which means Mizuki gets her puzzle money…but little do they know they’re being observed by a rival group of weirdos. To be continued…

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 04 – A Tough Egg to Crack

As of this week, Mizuki is no longer the “new kid” nor the latest member of the Hero Club, thanks to the arrival of another transfer student, Mikuriya Futaba. She witnesses Yamato immediately assign a Power Ranger color to Futaba—green—and attempt to recruit him, but the aloof English word-spouting Futaba dismisses Noda’s blathering as “ridiculous.”

Futaba proves extremely popular to the girls, what with his guitar, his “avant-garde” drawing “skills”, and as demonstrated in cooking class, his culinary flair. When the class has thirty minutes to prepare an egg dish, the hero club members decide to make it a competition, which is ruined when Yamato’s weird ostrich egg cake goes flying into Futaba’s hot oil. Futaba and Rei put the resulting flame out the same way, and reveal that they are cousins.

Mizuki and Tomoki insist Yamato apologize, and Rei suggests he buy him his favorite pudding at a very specific sweets shop. This requires getting in line at the crack of dawn, but Yamato does that every morning to train, while Rei has to get up to make lunches for his many siblings. We later learn Tomoki timed his arrival at the bus stop for the specific bus wearing a vinyl wrap of his beloved Sora-chan.

The gambit works, as Futaba accepts the rare dessert and membership into the Hero Club, much to Mizuki’s bemusement. But it’s not so strange that Futaba would join, as he possesses his own personal variation on chuuni monologueing that sprang up every so often in the episode, as well as his insistance on being seen as a renaissance man.

As for Mizuki, it seems whether she originally wanted to be in the club or not, there’s no denying that she’s in it now. She’s no longer being nudged into situations, she’s right in the middle of things, even getting up at dawn for the jello run. The stigma of hanging around a bunch of weirdos is gradually wearing off.

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 03 – Having It Rough

Of the Hero Club members, the aloof and apathetic Tsukumo Rei remains the most mysterious and enigmatic. This week’s episode draws the curtain back on Rei and shows that while he may talk and act like serious or ominous things are going on or about to happen, the reality of the situation is a lot more…ordinary. In that regard, he’s not that different from the others—especially when he runs into a flock of pigeons and laughs!

After a cryptic phone call, Rei rushes off somewhere, and Mizuki and the others follow him, curious what might be up. Noda, Nakamura and Takashima all buy in to the fact that Rei can control walk signals and make merchants sell him things on sale, but Mizuki can tell the signals were a coincidence and Rei just…knows when to shop.

Then they encounter Rei with his three little siblings, who have lost their beloved pet cat in the forest, and accompany him onto the grounds of a shrine to track him down. Takashima jumps at the sight of anything from a fluttering banner to a rusty sign, but he’s so emphatic in his fear that Mizuki starts getting the creeps; it is dark after all.

After “Touga” ends up “sacrificing” himself to save the others from the “monster”, Takashima slips and falls down a hill into a ditch, leaving just Noda, Rei and Mizuki when the “monster” approaches. Turns out it’s just a very burly monk, carrying Takashima and Nakamura…and the cat. The mission is accomplished, but with a lot of completely unnecessary rigmarole along the way.

When Rei returns the cat to his little siblings, the club learns he has three older siblings—the proverbial Cerberus—who demand he make dinner immediately or else. It’s clear Rei’s too-cool demeanor at school and in club is merely a means of compensating for how trod-upon he is at home, having to shop for and feed six siblings despite three of them being older than him.

The others can’t hide their pity for Rei’s situation which is precisely the last thing Rei wants from there. Embarrassed, he’d much prefer to remain slightly threatening and inscrutable as before, but now that they know more about him and how he operates, it require “memory erasure” for that to be possible.

And there you have it: the chuuni kid who believes he’s above all the other chuuni kids, leading them on as a small escape from his put-upon position in his family.

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 02 – Taking Out the Trash and Making Friends Along the Way

The culprit in the “throwing things at Mizuki” mystery turns out not to be Rei/Purple, but Sekiya, a third-year who asked class rep Watase Nanako out. She never outright rejected him but said she needed time to think about it, and in the meantime, Sekiya has been stalking her, while taking his frustrations out on Mizuki.

In a meeting Nakamura/Black’s house, the club determines that the best way to get Sekiya off Watase’s back is to make it appear she has a boyfriend, even if it’s a fake one for that purpose. While “pretty boy” Tomoki/Yellow is the most obvious choice, Watase picks a wild card in Nakamura, judging him the best guy to get the job done.

She doesn’t get Nakamura Kazuhiro, but Hououin Kyouma Ryushouin Touga, his chuuni alter-ego. This proves highly effective at the mall where Watase tells Sekiya she’s already dating someone. As Sekiya follows them while they go clothes shopping (Kaz gets soaked in the rain during his introduction), the stalker is constantly kept off balance by all of the chuuni jargon and Watase’s apparent fondness for it (and knack for translating).

By the time Touga whips out his “Lost Child Apocalypse” tome (at which which the others got a sneak peak while doing a room search) Sekiya is in full chuunibabble overload.

With the stalker dispatched, Watase expresses her gratitude to Nakamura for helping her out, along with Mizuki for giving her courage to deal with Sekiya face-on. For this, Watase asks if she and Mizuki can be friends, and if she’ll call her by her given name, Nanako. Thus the Hero Club completed two missions: ridding Watase of a pest, and getting Mizuki a new friend.

As for Rei/Purple, there’s still something shifty about him, like he’s hovering over all, controlling things. Mizuki’s suspicions were only intensified when he saw Rei with Sekiya outside the mall bathroom, discussing something. We’ll see if there’s anything to this, or if like last week, attention on Rei is directed to someone else. The preview indicates the latter.

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 01 (First Impressions) – Those Who are Wise Do Not Court Danger

Transfer student Hijiri Mizuki just wanted to blend into her new class quietly and make new friends. Too bad the day she transferred she has an eye infection necessitating an eyepatch. That eyepatch is a veritable target for precisely the opposite sort she wanted to be associated with: those afflicted with chuunibyou.

They include Noda Yamato, who is obsessed with superhero shows and considers himself a low-key hero. To be fair, he and his fellow members of the Hero Club are known for performing acts of kindness and assistance for people. When she can’t come out and tell the friendly class rep Wakase that she wants help making friends (and who can blame her?), Wakase sends Mizuki to their club, who make her their latest client, and she meets more weirdos.

Takashima Tomoki is handsome but only likes 2D girls. The theatrical Nakamura Kazuhiro dresses like Ikari Gendo and believes he’s the spawn of an angel and devil. Tsukumo Rei, well…aside from wearing bright clothes and cat-themed accessories, we don’t learn much about him, except that he’s by far the most standoffish.

Noda plants the seed that the others (excepting Rei) quickly adopt and embellish: Mizuki’s eyepatch is a result of her having yet to awaken the latent powers contained within, and instances of numerous projectiles thrown in Mizuki’s direction (a soccer ball, a rubber flamingo, and a shuttlecock) indicate that “the Agency” is hellbent on eliminating her before her powers awaken.

This is all delusional chuuni nonsense, but concurrent with that investigation, Noba is hard at work making hundreds of paper airplanes to launch from the roof during a school sports event, each with a call to make friends on Mizuki’s behalf. So Noba is trying to help—just in way she finds incredibly embarrassing. Mizuki also learns that Noba is popular due to his considerable sports acumen (and ability to jump from great heights without injury) and Tomoki also has lots of real guy friends.

Once she’s on the field for the sports event, the biggest object yet to threaten her, a basketball hoop, starts to come down after a gust of wind that blows up mere moments after she sneezes, unwittingly dodging another soccer ball, and her eyepatch falls off. From that point on, Noba & Co. believe she’s awakened, but the threat of the Agency lingers, and Nakamura fingering Tsukumo Rei as the mastermind behind the series of attacks. Rei, for his part, smirks as a found-out villain would.

But this is only the beginning! Mizuki didn’t get the group of friends she wanted, but they’re so damn sincere in their delusions, she actually starts to kinda-sorta believe some of their chuuni nonsense. I first heard Mizuki’s seiyu, Akasaki Chinatsu, in Kill Me Baby! a zany, rapid-fire adaptation of a 4-koma comic. In that she was usually the manic comic instigator, but here she expertly plays the exhausted straight-man.

The rest of the cast is equally game, and while their particular chuunibyou antics are nothing I haven’t seen before, I appreciated the various different styles of chuuni bouncing off each other, and the execution and attention to detail are above reproach.

If you’re kinda over depictions of chuunibyou, I wouldn’t blame you; this wasn’t on my initial Fall 2019 list for that very reason! Nvertheless, the heartening and charm-filled Outburst Dreamer Boys is a fun, breezy, better-than-average-looking show I’ll be watching more of, both to see what further antics Mizuki is subjected to, and to find out if she ever gets used to it or—lord forbid—participates in!