Tsubaki’s intending to protect the honor of one of his classmates, though he may not be up to it.
What They Say:
When Daisey runs afoul of the leader of a group of delinquents who threatens to trash Kaimei High unless she becomes his woman, Tsubaki takes it upon himself to avenge her honor and set things to rights.
The Review:
While we’ve had some material involving Tsubaki recently, there hasn’t been all that much on the student council itself. Which is a little surprising since there’s still that competitive edge between them, even with Tsubaki and Bossun having now cleared up things between them. This episode doesn’t want to deal with that in particular but rather focus on one of the student council members, Daisey. She’s a very rough woman with her personality as she’s coarse and dismissive of everyone, making her an unusual part of the council that’s supposed to help others, but there are softer moments to her as well.
Not that we see them at first here, understandably so, as there’s a group of older boys whose leader is making all sorts of threats and promises about what he’ll do if she doesn’t become his girl. She’s rebuffed the initial approaches in her own way so far, but now she’s off meeting their leader in person, who has a kind of amusing approach to winning her over. He’s got his little fiefdom that he runs and has a strong hand with the guys that are with him, but he’s also playful in how he deals with Daisey and ensures that it’s something that isn’t pushed too hard, too fast, but also makes it clear that he will have what he wants. It’s a no-win situation for her as it starts to unfold since she’s rather trapped by what’s going on, but she doesn’t cower in the face of it.
When Tsubaki learns what’s going on, he’s the stand up kind of stand up guy that can’t let it sit so he ends up trying to take on the whole gang himeslf, going so far as to tell Bossun about it but saying that he doesn’t need any help. The whole thing just boils over though and the Sket Club takes an amusing approach to helping out in a way that tries to make it clear that it’s not them providing a hand to help assuage Tusbaki’s feelings. The costumes they come up with are priceless, and call back earlier episodes, in order to provide the right kind of support for Tsubaki so he can help out Daisey in her struggle. It’s somewhat typical men to the rescue kind of mentality, but it’s salved a bit by the fact that Daisey stood her ground well overall rather than being a damsel in distress.
In Summary:
Sket Dance has a decent episode here but not one that really stands out. I wasn’t much of a fan of Daisey before and this doesn’t turn me into one, but it does have some good material for her and makes her a little more accessible. What does make it work is that it allows Tsubaki to shine without a lot of silliness in the way of it but it doesn’t turn him into some sort of superhero or something. He takes some serious licks and is saved himself before he can go all out. And once again he’s shown that there is something to be said for having a support group as well. It’s not a bad episode, it has some cute moments, but it’s mostly a Tsubaki piece that helps him a bit while also making Daisey a little more accessible.
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.
