Maid-chan no Anime: Chio-chan no Tsugakuro (Chio’s School Road)
It is said there are two types of school roads: Normal ones and Chio’s. Actually this is not said, but it might get to this point.
Chio’s School Road has a fairly easy premise: there is a girl that walks to school. But because this girl is Chio, this walk is far away from normal.
Normal is what Chio wants to look, but that is not easy for a girl that is a serious gamer who even has an emergency procedure if her mother comes to her room in the night, where Chio is pretending to not be in the middle of gaming (what she is doing of course). Confronted with the danger of being exposed as not-normal, Chio can summon her incredible nerd gamer powers of planning and devise a logical, but inexplicably bonkers plan to win.
For example, when a construction site threatens her to come late to school (and so draw eyes on her), Chio resorts to taking a short cut across the roofs of the city. Even though Chio is very athletic (which she of course never shows if possible), this is quite dangerous and stupid, Maid-chan things. And that is even if you ignore that “inconspicuous” and “running on roofs” are natural enemies.
Inconspicuous (most of the time) but dangerous (again, most of the time) is also a good way to describe Chio’s best friend Manana.
Manana is a cheerful girl, but at the same time she is resentful of nearly everything. She also has no problems to use her friends to get an advantage. In this respect she is even worse than Chio.
When she sees that Chio has become friends with the popular running ace Yuki, Manana instantly devises a plan to use Chio to become friend with Yuki too, rising in popularity herself.
Despite all that Manana can be very caring and supporting if she decides so.
There is likely no one on the whole school who likes running more than Yuki. She is athletic, beautiful, popular and as dumb as a hollow log. She believes practically everything you tell her. Even Manana sometimes gets a bad conscience because of that gullibility. Not often, but sometimes.
No bad conscience at all anybody has towards the senpai Madoka, and Maid-chan can only agree to this. What a bad girl! Madoka says she likes Kabbadi, a contact sport, but Chio soon discovers the real reason for Madoka’s love of the sport. That girl just likes to grope other girls!
Too strange? Of course Chio’s School Road has cliche characters, too. Momo is a very strict member of the public morals committee at Chio's school. And, Maid-chan is as surprised as you are, she is in love with a teacher!
But besides that fairly normal secret, there is another. A darker one that she only shows in certain circumstances. Because Momo has problems with getting high – on sweets!
Whenever Momo eats something sweet, she starts talking about the supreme sweetness and sticky feeling and prickling smell of the heavenly sweet!!!
It is a very harmless switch in her, but Maid-chan understands why Momo does not want others to see her uncontrollable fits of delight.
If you thought the pupils of Chio’s school are already more than any person should have to endure, there are more that Chio can run into on her way to school. The most likely one is Andō Mayuta.
Ando-san is a biker who once declared to become the most dangerous of them. Due to a series of accidents, Chio was forced to pretend to be a secret killer. Ando, in fear of being killed, promised to leave his gang.
The misunderstanding was solved a bit later and the two became friends, but Ando still holds his promise and tries to do normal work benefiting the society.
Also, he conspicuously often happens to be where Chio will walk to school.
All is well that ends well, a saying goes, but there can be really bad happen to a lower end of someone. As it does to poor Manana.
The little girl doing the backside attack is Chiharu, from a rich girl’s school. Maid-chan will not spoiler who she is or why she attacks, but rest assured a fierce fight with life and death on the line will happen. Who will win and who will lose? Watch Chio’s School Road to find out!
Conclusion
Chio’s School Road is definitely not your normal “daily school life” series. The setting alone (the only thing we see from the school is the entrance) of only showing the way to school is unusual.
At the same time the characters are all an interesting mix of normal and not normal. And like Chio’s plans, their actions are at the same time very logical and totally strange.
Maid-chan likes that! The stupidity of humans stripped from the hiding veils of embarrassment!
If the 12 episode anime wanted to give you a ton of fun with strange, but somehow day-to-day characters, Maid-chan can only say:
Maid-chan especially likes the simple but cute optical character design, that nearly covers the cheap backgrounds, but of course also the mix of character traits.
She only hopes that Maid-chan’s master never gets involved with one of those girls.
All in all Chio’s School Road gets a 9/10 on the totally objective Maid-chan scale.
