Some schools should have no access to broadcast technology. Yabisu!
What They Say:
The Student Council steals the spotlight in this episode! When the Broadcasting Club begins a weekly televised talk show, their first guest is charismatic Student Council member Shinba Michiru. The idea is for him to lead a cooking segment, but the show becomes chaotic due to Shinba’s less-than-helpful assistants, the manipulative Agata and moody Daisey.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The installation of a new interschool broadcast system is definitely something that’s be given a wary eye considering the student (and teacher) population here. While the principal alone is dangerous enough with what he may do with it, which is cutely shot down by the broadcasting club thankfully, the club does have a lot of air time to fill when it comes to the morning broadcasts. And they also are aware that they don’t want to just put on a talk show which could be considered boring after awhile, or quickly depending on the case. While they have to get out the basic info of the day, they also have to hook the students into watching and not make it a chore.
So leave it to Switch of all people to suggest the best thing they can do in having a rotating guest of sorts who can show off a special skill or some such at the start of each show before getting into the meat of the usual talk show format. That launches quite a range of interested parties since it’ll be shown in other schools as well and there are certainly plenty of personalities in this building that want the attention. Even more amusingly is that the student council gets involved as Shinba wants to run a cooking show and have others in the student council help him. Though he’s not interested in the president who views himself as an ideal candidate. Sometimes the student council bothers the hell out of me, particularly with Tsubaki, but Agata is a really fun character that needs more time.
The bulk of the episode focuses on how the cooking program itself goes, after they realize that the broadcasting club has zero personality themselves since they treat it like a serious news program. When Shinba gets on screen, everything gets better and eventually does turn to a good bit of fun as Agata participates and eventually his frustration with things makes for some wacky food related moments. Letting the student council take a bit of the attention is definitely good here since they do it without putting the Sket Club in competition with them, instead letting them shine on their own. It’s what the cast has needed in order to start really defining themselves as who they are rather than who they’re against when it comes to the Sket Club. That does reduce the screen time the rest have, but after some of the recent episodes, a bit of a break isn’t a bad thing.
In Summary:
Sket Dance continues to be one of those shows that straddles the line of interest for me since some of their stories are dull but others have a certain near-80’s style charm to them. When it’s episodic, it actually works at its best and even more so when it does double stories in a single episode as it doesn’t drag a gag or gimmick through the mud. This one splits things up a little bit but in a good way and it lets the student council members, some of the lesser known ones in fact, get more screen time in a positive way. And the best part is that they’re not doing it to spite anyone, push back against the Sket Club or anything else that has largely defined them up until this point. Agata needs more time though as I want to see more of him and how he is as the student council president.
Grade: B
Streamed 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.
