Misunderstandings in the realm of romance are the order of the day here with Saaya as the catalyst.
What They Say:
Agata is normally protective of his younger sister, but his genius IQ goes out the window when he becomes convinced that Saaya and Tsubaki are in love with each other.
The Review:
With the nature of the series, there are times where it really does spend some of its time to expand the somewhat steady cast of supporting characters. Often we get a character of the week and deal with them and then they become bit players or catalysts down the line which makes for good fun and some call backs. Some of the supporting cast hasn’t been dealt with all that much though and it’s primarily with the student council side. Tsubaki has gotten a lot of attention, but that made sense. The rest though don’t get much and are mostly just caricatures or cardboard cutouts at this point. With this episode, we get some good fun with the student council president, Agata, as events start to happen that gets him quite involved.
Unfortunately for Agata, the focus comes because there are whispers of change coming about that his younger sister Saaya and Tsubaki may be close to becoming an item. He’s the standard protective older brother in a lot of ways and even as much as he may like and respect Tsubaki as a part of the student council, it’s not something he can let just happen. This gives us a good look at Agata at home, along with Saaya in a few scenes, and it does help to soften him a bit. It even gives us a glimpse of when Tsubaki became a part of the student council and shows some of the changes since then. Amusingly, Agata does get very protective here as he intends to test Tsubaki based on what he believes is going on and that alone just has an aura of evil about it.
While the show does deal with these two a lot, there’s other aspects to it as well as one of the reasons for Tsubaki and Saaya talking is that he’s interested in how siblings get along. Whcih in turn leads Tsubaki to trying and do a dinner of some sort with Bossun in order to try and firm up their relationship a little bit. With the shared lineage that they have, Tsubaki has kept out of Bossun’s life for the most part but there has to be some curiosity about it all as well. Saaya gives some amusing impetus for things, especially since he keeps misreading Saaya’s interest in him as something else entirely. And with Agata watching from the shadows, it only gets more complicated as it gets along. Having long liked Saaya, letting her get more time here and getting to know Agata a bit more definitely makes for a lot of fun here.
In Summary:
With all the confusion about who likes who coming from different perspectives, especially when the truth of the matter continues to be Saaya’s interest in Bossun, this episode is a lot of fun with all the misunderstandings going on. When it all ends up in a group date of sorts at the end under the guise of just hanging out, everyone causes more and more trouble along th e way, especially as Agata gets involved. While bossun is a bit player here and the others from the club are hardly in it at all, I really liked the general tone and direction here. It’s something where I do wish things would get cleared up and move forward in some way as I think an actual bit of dating going on with some of the Sket Club members would add a new wrinkle, I also knwo that a series like this is focused more on the status quo with cosmetic changes so I don’t really expect much in that direction. But what we get here is definitely and I have hopes for more.
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.
