Quite a few animes are set in schools. Hyakko is yet another story of school girls and their adventures in junior high/ high school. Kamizono School is a huge private school with more than 3000 students from elementary to high school. With that many students, it is quite large and can be very confusing. Ayumi Nonomura is a new student at Kamizono. She’s a bit overwhelmed and gets lost immediately, which results in her meeting Tatsuki Iizuka, another girl in her class. Tatsuki has been going to the school since elementary, so she knows the ins and outs (but not always the way). She’s a bit pushy and gruff, but nice in the end. They also meet Torako Kageyama and Suzume Saotome (known as Suzu) when they see them jump out of a second story window. Thus begins the adventures of a truly diverse foursome who all met because they got lost going to class and end up becoming the best of friends. Of course, there are quite a few other girls in the class that they become friends with as well!

Their first adventure is to decide what club they are joining. Tatsuki keeps proclaiming that she’s not their best friend, but Torako keeps ignoring her and going on anyway. At Torako’s insistence they start with baseball, even though girls aren’t allowed on the guy’s baseball team. That doesn’t work out so well, so they try tennis next. Let’s just say that tennis doesn’t work out very well either. No matter what the sport or club, Torako and Tatsuzi just can’t seem to work together. It seems like there’s always going to be a competition between them.

Nene Andou is the class president. She informs Suzu that she has been put on the tree-planting committee and Torako is on the disciplinary committee, since they skipped out on the meeting where you choose committees. Nene is quite a character. The disciplinary committee is in charge of making sure the students don’t violate the dress code too much, even though Nene violates it herself. Nene is also way too interested in checking out the other female students, even to the point of sexual harassment, but she is the class president, so I guess she can get away with it.

The girls also meet Chie Suzugasaki, a member of the Robot Society. She enjoys building robots and wants to be a robotic engineer. This leads us to find out that Tatsuki’s father is president of the giant corporation that Chie wants to work for and her grandfather started the company, so Tatsuki is really well off. Like Nene, Chie is also in their class. I find it odd that out of a school of so many students, they seem to only meet people outside of class that are already in their class, but I guess it makes the story go easier.

One of the few boys that we will hear about is Shishimaru Sengoku. Shishimaru falls in love with Torako after seeing her picture from all the pictures that Koma Kobayashi has been taking to sell. Shishimaru is convinced that she is his angel and perfect. This really doesn’t seem like Torako, but he’s determined! I think it would have been interesting to see him more, but this show is focused on the girls. One of the other boys we see is Torako’s brother, Kitsune. When we meet Kitsune, you’ll find out why Torako doesn’t like to tell people she has a brother.

Some episodes were just kind of boring, like the episode about eating in the cafeteria. There was also an entire episode dedicated to making one girl over from creepy to pretty. There is just no overall plot to the series. They’re mostly disjointed episodes about school life. I do like the music, though. Most of the time, it is normal anime music but when there’s conflict, it turns into a heavy metal sound which is really neat. Overall, if you’re looking for an anime about high school kids and what they do all day, then you’ll enjoy Hyakko. If not, you may want to skip it.