The mediocre starts the story, but it ends well with a look at Switch’s past, back when he used to talk.
What They Say:
After helping Yosshi arrange a date, the Sket-dan run into Shinzou arguing with his younger brother. Unlike the proper samurai, his younger brother is rebellious and they don’t seem to get along… The two’s relationship reminds Switch of his own brother and the events of the past…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Sket Dance has built up a decent supporting cast that shows up at different times that can help accent an episode in a good way, as well as adding to the overall cast. This one gives us a look at a story that involves one of the first characters that the Sket Club helped way back at the start of the series with Shinzou asking for some help when it comes to his younger brother Shinpei. While Shinzou continues to portray the proper samurai lifestyle in how he acts and carries himself, his younger brother is pretty rebellious and is entering that whole punk territory, though looking more like a thug than the traditional yanki style that we often see. For Shinzou, it’s a real problem seeing this happen, especially as his brother starts to tell him less since it impacts him so much.
The club can’t help but to help in the end though, as they come across Shinpei in the midst of being attacked by a large number of other thugs. There’s some reasoning behind it all, especially when it comes to how he wants to do the right thing by his brother and is doing it in his own way. The one that seems to really take to all of this though is Switch himself who puts himself forward to help out. This actually segues in the second half where we see Switch a couple of years prior when he was fourteen years old and living with his older brother in the house. They’re only a year apart and at the age they’re at, they’re able to interact well without any real problems. It’s pretty disconcerting to hear real dialogue coming out of Switch rather than his computer voice.
Spending time dealing with his brother who has his own life going on where he’s kind of distant in some ways, looking off elsewhere and dealing with the pressures he has, it’s interesting to see the differences in the brothers. But there’s also some jealousies going on here as well with a young woman that his brother is into that in some ways he’s able to communicate better with. There’s also a great little sequence that also shows where he started with his computer voice side of his life with how the voices were chosen. But mostly, what we’re seeing is how his older brother continually feels left behind by Switch who seems to be able to just naturally do things better. It’s a difficult spot because he’s proud of how far he’s come, but you can see a little more than that to it as well.
In Summary:
Sket Dance does some basic silly stuff for the first half of it as it deals with Shinzou’s brother but it’s the kind of story that lacks any real resonance and in a way any real point to it beyond just introducing some brotherly material. And that serves as the launching point for the second half, and as a launching point it could and should have been done better. The second half feels a little listless in a way, but it works because we get to see Switch’s origin story so to speak, going back a couple of years to see him with his brother and the kind of relationship that they have. It’s not detailed, but there is some nice nuance to it and it also gives us a look as to how he got into the whole computer voice thing, though not the reason he’s still doing it. It offers up more questions than anything else, but it’s what ends up saving the episode from otherwise being too uninteresting.
Grade: C+
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.
The anime did a better job of Shinzo and Shinpei’s story than the manga. There was no fight in the manga, but SKET Dance’s helping of Yosshi is non existent. I agree that Yosshi’s part did not help the episode.