A light is shined on Himeko’s past to good effect.
What They Say:
Himeko breaks her Cyclone while helping a client who was being shaken down for cash from a bully… But when buying a new field hockey stick, she’s reminded of what happened in her past…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we’ve had some good episodes as of late that have focused on short form storytelling and more in dealing with the situations at hand rather than the Sket club members themselves. They’ve obviously been involved, but they haven’t really had a strong lead presence. The group definitely handles being shuffled to secondary status pretty well in order to deal with the newly introduced characters and their dilemmas though, so it works out pretty well. Still, you do want to focus on your core characters every now and again and this episode lets Himeko shine pretty well.
Her style of dealing with problems tends to be a bit more physical so seeing her dealing with a bully by going after him with her hockey stick isn’t a surprise. And considering the amount of times she uses it, it’s also not a surprise that it ends up breaking eventually and that puts her in a bind. So this has her heading off to the store to get a new one, which is an amusing adventure all in itself as the guys try to suggest different kinds to get and they’re all pretty wacky. While that is fun, what all of it opens up is a flashback that helps to expand what we know of Himeko from her days when she was younger before the Sket Club when she played a whole lot of field hockey.
It’s a time when she met another girl the same age named Arisa that she got along with pretty well. She’s a bit shier then and definitely more “normal” looking if that fits as she has a regular hair color and style and is relatively demure compared to her outgoing self now. She ends up getting closer to Arisa though and caught up in her problems since Arisa is a good kid but weak and easily pushed and manipulated and bullied. It’s the kind of thing that does get to Himeko and it’s good to see her moving from your average kid to someone who will stand up when you have to do the right thing rather than just watch by it. It’s not a deep origin story and it’s a bit on the quiet and more serious side, but it completely fits with who she is.
In Summary:
Sket Dance starts working down the same path as Switch did earlier in its run by looking at her past and throwing a mild curveball or two in there about how she ended up like she is now. The story with her and Arisa is fairly standard fare with a nice little twist along the way that changes things up a bit, but unlike the time we saw for Switch, it’s not exactly compelling. It’s not bad, but it has that kind of darker and mildly oppressive feel about it with the way it’s colored and design. Himeko’s decent at this point in her life and it’d be curious to see more of her as a fairly normal kid, but she’s getting thrust into something bigger here so it’s the changing time for her which has its fun. It’s not a knockout episode based on what’s here, but it is predictable in a lot of ways which is both good and bad.
Grade: B-
Readers Rating: [ratings]
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.
