Gintama and Sket Dance – shipped at last!
What They Say:
The Sket-dan encounter some unexpected guests as the main cast of Gintama shows up in their clubroom unexpectedly. This can only mean one thing: It’s crossover time! Can there really be room in the world for 2 different shows based on Shounen Jump manga airing at 6 PM about a trio of misfits who do odd jobs?!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After watching a fair bit of Gintama over the last couple of years, both in simulcast form and through home video, the crossover of that series into Sket Dance is definitely a cute piece but is what you’d expect in that it’s a completely surreal and out of character kind of episode for the Sket Dance gang. The arrival of Gin and the gang there through means created in their series has them being cutely dismissive of the main cast as a poor man’s version of what they do themselves, which of course gets Bossun pretty frustrated and easily angered and even Himeko gets offended by it.
A lot of the early gags are the pretty self aware pieecs which can have some fun as the gang all hang out in the club room and Bossun gets worried about the fact that Gintama could possibly be trying to steal their 6pm time slot, which would be a real problem since it’d cast Sket dance off somewhere worse and then Gintama would have a double hold on prime slot material. There’s some amusing internal dialogue over it, but they do have to actually get doing something as even Gin comments that you can’t really call it anime if you’re just sitting around all this time. But as much as Bossun is worried about things, it’s cute to see him admiring Gin in a way even as Gin really does dominate the episode.
The episode does go for some real fun in the final act though where Switch, for the fun of it, adds a time travel element to the device that Gin and the others used to cross over here and that takes them back to the first episode of Sket Dance and then through a bit of a showcase of the past episodes with chibi versions of the cast commenting on it. The time travel part has some fun to it as they get to see the episodes through a slightly different light and the commentary by Gin and the others, as they’re found “stranded” in some of the older episodes, provides for a number of cute moments that make you smile but aren’t exactly laugh out loud moments. It’s all in service of show what great friends they all are, but friends that take good jabs at each other.
In Summary:
The episode has a number of cute anime references throughout here, some more blunt than others, but I loved the reference to One Piece and Toriko’s recent crossover (which sadly was not available for simulcast here) and others like the whole Boys Be and Maria gags. There’s plenty of fun to be had here but it’s definitely a “for fans” kind of episode where it uses to similar but different properties to promote each other and to just be silly. I like both shows well enough but these kinds of crossovers just never do all that much for me. The two groups play off of each other well and Switch makes the final segment a lot of fun but it’s an episode that’ll have varied results for people I’m sure.
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.
Chris, I think that you forgot to mention though is that the Sket Dance Crossover was actually the second part of a 2 part crossover with Gintama. Part one aired Monday on Crunchyroll on Gintama’. Still I liked your review.