The club is brought in to help a fellow student who has made himself out to be more than he is, significantly so.
What They Say:
Tetsu comes and asks the Sket-dan to meet with someone in his place. It seems like a sickly girl who he was exchanging messages with under a false persona wants to come see him…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the last couple of episodes that dealt with the student council and how one of the members was so intent on shutting down the club before he was shown the error of his ways, Sket Dance returns to the basics here by helping out another student. This time around it introduces us to Tetsu, a fellow student who finds out about the club and decides that they’re the ones he needs to help out a really tricky situation. As it turns out, he’s been exchanging emails with a young woman named Misaki who is sickly after falling into a river several years ago but he’s given her a very different impression of who he is, so far as to saying he’s on the student council himself and has built up a pretty boy reputation for her.
When it gets close to the time to meet, things are arranged so that Bossun ends up getting in touch with her and going out for awhile to try and feel out the situation. Amusingly, he’s really terrible when it comes to dates and women in general in these kinds of situations, though he does change his appearance enough to seem different and to get into the role as it goes along. The two have a bit of an awkward time together, but there are some small revelations made along the way about how Misaki remembers Tetsu quite a lot and we see that Tetsu has been doing things for her in a way ever since because of his concern for her. It turns out that at least in his mind, he needn’t have bothered because she sought medical attention and has healed a lot since then, and it makes him feel like he did it all for naught.
The episode takes a slow approach to things as it works on finding a way for Tetsu and Misaki to reconcile in a way and that’s rather welcome after all the over the top wackiness of the last couple of episodes. That’s not to say there isn’t any wackiness here. Bossun’s time on the date is very fun to watch since he wants to get out of it as quickly as possible and having the gang all out of their normal clothes and into other street clothes helps to personalize them a bit more. There’s even a silly sequence with the Sket club doing the whole riding fast in a cart while trying to make sure that they can save the day moment. In the end though, it comes down to whether you like the characters involved and both Tetsu and Misaki are cute and fun even if they are in the end fairly light in nature since they’re introduced and sent off within the space of a single episode.
In Summary:
With Sket Dance having mostly done small stories so far and continuing that pattern here, I’m finding myself enjoying it while very definitely acknowledging that it’s also its weakness. Keeping things pretty much real world and just going a bit beyond the norm of what someone would do to help someone, Sket Dance does limit itself but it manages to keep its focus on the characters. What it hasn’t done is to really work on the characters themselves and making them more of the focus. At this stage, it’s all about those that they’re helping and that’s working to set up the basic foundations of how the club works and the skills and abilities of those involved. When it starts to really make these characters fleshed out, it can go a fair bit further and hopefully become more interesting. Right now it’s enjoyable fluff that makes you smile but is still entirely forgettable.
Grade: C+
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
