A class trip, especially a class ski trip, doesn’t come easily for these students.
What They Say:
The students of Kaimei High are going on a class trip, but first, they have to participate in a rope skipping competition to see which class gets the best rooms. Saaya doesn’t have an athletic bone in her body, so is worried she’s going to doom her class to the worst rooms of all, until the Sket-dan tries teaching her how to skip! Then, the students are on their way, but in the back of one bus, Chuu-sensei is playing mad scientist again, and this time his victims are Bossun, Himeko, and Tsubaki.
The Review:
With the potential to wrap a couple of different predictble story elements together, Sket Dance is setting up to do a class trip and combine it with a ski trip. Ski trips go back to my early anime days with Kimagure Orange Road, so there’s always something fun and nostalgic about them for me. But with Sket Dance, things are never going to be easy with just going to the trip and running with it. No, Chuu-san has come up with a challenge for them to deal with in order to get going. And that’s beyond having J-son be the one to help them figure out how to do room choices and the like, which factors into things. What they end up coming up with is comical in the end as there are only so many good rooms and some class has to get the good room while someone else has to get the “super pathetic” one.
So the big competition comes down to rope skipping between the classes to see who will get the good rooms on the ski trip. With a lot of non-athletic people in various classes, that makes things a real challenge since it’s a group event. A very big group event. The focus on Saaya and her class works well since she’s pretty bad at this kind of thing, so she ends up going to the Sket club in order to get the help she needs. There’s a lot of cuteness to how Bossun helps her train and it brings Saaya a bit more to the forefront in a fun way since she’s so intent on learning, but has to do it in secret. It’s also a bonus that the whole thing pretty much seems like a chance for Bossun to be legitimately perverted too.
Thankfully, they do get the whole ski trip aspect going as well, which has the fun of the trip up and all the quirks of the characters with how they act, such as Tsubaki with his less than normal bus snack that makes Bossun cringe. A class trip like this also has a bit of potential for romance which is nicely touched upon as well when it comes to Saaya, who really has some good moments in this episode. The real danger here though is when Himeko gets carsick along the way and Chuu is the one with some homemade solutions to help her along. Their panic is once again priceless, especially when they start to understand what each of the pills does. Chuu’s always amused me on some level with the way he comes up with his inventions and the one he has here for Bossun and Tsubaki is definitely amusing, especially with Himeko’s issues at the same time. It’s the kind of thing that does fit on this kind of trip and as goofy as it is, it does make you laugh and grin.
In Summary:
Sket Dance plays with some standard story concepts here as it often does but it does have fun with it overall. The planning for the skip trip as a class trip is definitely amusing with the way it uses Saaya as a focal point. The whole rope sipping thing is fun and I definitely approved of how Bossun was attempting to train her. The second half is where I had the most fun though since the Sket Club ended up sitting with Chuu for the ride and he’s the kind of guy that’s just going to cause problems no matter what. What we get with him are stories that go beyond the normal, something the show does every now and then to take itself out of the comfort zone a bit and just be wacky. While I do like that the series is relatively real world, these sidesteps are definitely amusing.
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.
