Agata takes center stage as his tenure is about to end.
What They Say:
Tsubaki is going to be the new Student Council president, but will his campus crackdown lead to rebellion before he even takes up the post? Then, Agata is made to jump through hoops in order to get his kidnapped sister back on his last day as Student Council president.
The Review:
With some good silly stuff lately, Sket Dance is the type of show that does keep a lot of things the same but also does some things that advances the overall narrative. Changes do happen here, which we’ve seen with how Tsubaki and Bossun’s relationship has changed over the last seventy episodes. I wouldn’t have expected that or some of the other nudges and tweaks made from when I started watching the series. With this episode, more changes are in the offing as the student council president is now moving on and that means that others have to move up in ranks and continue on into the next year. The department members will continue to check in, but that does mean some things will change overall and we haven’t seen the last of them.
For Tusbaki, he intends to take over as student council president and to make the outgoing president proud by going hard and fast on the student body in general with getting them to follow the rules. Tsubaki really goes whole hog here and pushes things to the letter, making sure that every line is crossed and so forth. You know he’s doing it just to make the outgoing president proud and to set the right example, but it’s just too clumsily done. You know Tsubaki will take this route to do things, and that it will diverge from the previous president since he was more laid back, but it shows that unless it’s made clear to him that Tsubaki hasn’t grown in ways he needed to. While it makes for good fun, I had hoped that we’d see Tsubaki do things more like Bossun in a way upon taking this role and providing a little more fun nuance.
For the second half, it shifts to Agata outside of his student council duties and works with him and his sister as she’s now been kidnapped. We’ve had a bit of fun with both of them recently, what with that whole awkward date and stalking sequence, so putting Agata into this situation actually works well to expand him a bit more. We know he’s a good and caring brother so this method of challenges given to him to try and save his sister is fun and amusing to watch unfold. His intensity is what makes it work as the logic and word game puzzles just don’t do anything for me. Sometimes things are just more than I want out of a show like this, as fun as they can be on some level. The end result is fun and worthwhile though as it shows the kind of friends that Agata has and helps to closure out his tenure well.
In Summary:
Shows like this tend to be all about the status quo and Sket Dance often does play that card to some degree. But it also knows when it has to shift things and make changes, which lets it be a lot more interesting than it would be otherwise. The cast of characters do grow and change, sometimes not as much as they should such as the case of Tsubaki in this episode, but it has them on a moving path rather than just stuck at one stationary point. There are things to like here overall, but parts of it kept me from really getting into it fully since it was more interested in puzzles and games that just didn’t click well for me. Still, as a story for Agata and Tsubaki, it works pretty well at its core.
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.
