One of my absolute favorite anime series of 2019 was After School Dice Club, aka Houkago Saikoro Club.
And one of the best anime songs of 2019, in my opinion, is After School Dice Club‘s ending theme — ‘On the Board‘ from Saki Miyashita, Marika Kouno, and Miyu Tomita
Released on October 2nd, 2019 and streamed in the west on Funimation, After School Dice Club is based on the manga series by Hirō Nakamichi.
It tells the story of Miki, Aya, Midori and later in the series Emilia, a group of friends who are in an after school board game club. The girls play a different board game every episode, while dealing with problems surrounding being a teenager both in and outside the world of games.
Problems that, if you sit in your room alone playing a video game, you would be dealing with alone. But, because the girls are together playing board games, the friendship that is cultivated through that activity is able to solve.
The After School Dice Club series itself is delightful.
Beautifully animated, with superb writing, excellent voice acting, gorgeous background artwork of Kyoto scenes lovingly drawn, characters you fall in love with and a storyline that is interesting and engaging.
The After School Dice Club ending theme (and to some extent, its opening theme) make this lovely series even better.
Because the ending theme — ‘On the Board‘ from the series’ voice actors Saki Miyashita, Marika Kouno, and Miyu Tomita — is the perfect piece for this cute girls doing cute things series.
It is adorably cute, hellishly catchy and sung with those baby girl voices even the most hard-bitten of us secretly love.
The song also has that massively powerful anime sound fans the world over love.
That sound that makes you realize the track is an anime song the minute the first bars of the huge instrumental intro with its exciting beat begin to play.
For me the After School Dice Club ending theme ‘On the Board‘ is not only a cool song for one of my favorite anime series of 2019, it is also a song I have loaded onto my phone and listen to almost every day.
Because its high-energy sound gives me energy as I furiously speedwalk my walk around Austria’s capital city. And don’t even get me started on that short, fast piano interlude towards the end of the song.
Because, man, that is so beautiful.
Listen to the After School Dice Club ending theme in the official Funimation video below, and watch that adorably cute opening animation sequence.
Then listen to the full version of the song in the video below that.
And I’ll guarantee you, you will soon have the track downloaded onto your phone and be exercising to it just like I am.