SKET Dance – 07
This many childhood friend stereotypes in one place can’t be healthy.
Hello all! Karakuri here! I finally got my hands on the Nendoroid Black Gold Saw this weekend so I’m in extremely good mood right now. But enough about me, and on to this week’s Sket Dance! Being an episode about childhood friends, this week had a few comedic moments, but it was mostly a lot of drama.
This episode, the Sket Dan are visited by the somewhat intimidating Tetsu. His request is about his childhood friend Misaki, who suffers from the ever popular unnamed life threatening disease like every other terminally ill character out there. When asked about it, a flashback starts of Tetsu’s childhood and how he promised to make her 1000 paper cranes so she would be healthy. Misaki then mentioned that she loved sakura blossoms, so Tetsu took her to ones by a river.
Throughout this otherwise touching scene, I was distracted by the fact that Misaki was wearing freaking carrots in her hair. Why the writers thought this would be a good idea, I don’t have a clue (they were normal barrettes in the manga). In any case, while the two were running around the sakura trees, Misaki slipped and fell into the river.
See? Carrots. Freaking carrots.
Stereotypical to all cases of anime characters falling in to rivers and such, Misaki immediately became sick (or in her case, even more sick). With Misaki on the brink of death, Tetsu blamed himself for her condition and she moved away shortly after the incident.
Getting to the actual request, it turns out that Tetsu is currently pen pals with Misaki, only he’s writing to her under a fake persona called Kotarou because he is ashamed of his current self (oh that and the fact he blames himself for her almost dying). With Misaki wanting to meet Kotarou on Saturday, the Sket devises a stand in plan with Bossun acting as him.
The actual day of the meeting, all seems to go according to plan (despite Bossun requesting help every 5 minutes). Eventually the conversation drifts to Misaki’s childhood friend ‘Te-chan’ and how they buried a time capsule of a paper crane by the sakura trees many years ago.
At least it’s an improvement over the carrots.
When they go to open it, they find that there is not only one crane, but more than 1000. Misaki then tells Bossun that opening the capsule and taking a crane with her was the reason she came back to the city. She also announces then that she will soon be travelling to America to get a life or death operation done. Before she leaves, she tells Bossun that she knit Kotarou a sweater and hands him a bag.
Bored? Try counting how many cranes there are here.
The Sket suggest that Tetsu should go see her off, but still weighed down with guilt, Kotarou refuses. He then runs off. Himeko finds him sitting alone and she points out that the sweater is in his size and that Misaki never called Bossun by the name Kotarou. Tetsu then realises that Misaki knew that he was Kotarou all along. Afterwards, we see Bossun putting a plan together.
The day of Misaki’s departure, she gets on the train alone with Tetsu nowhere in sight. It’s not until the train passes by the sakura trees that we see Tetsu in the sweater. It’s then that the Sket Dan release a bunch of pink pieces of paper (cut from Tetsu’s cranes) into the air to look like the sakura petals.
I actually avoided tearing up here. I’m rather proud of myself.
We find out later that Tetsu followed Misaki to America apparently ditching school in the process (those crazy Japanese and their traveling to other countries with no notice). Oh and there was a scene afterwards with Bossun’s mother and sister interrogating him about his ‘date’ with Misaki. I doubt that it was plot important though.
Oh god. It’s the Otome Filter all over again.
Want to know something sad? I’ve followed people like this before. Even more sad, it actually worked.
And so:
The episode was a touching mix of a bunch of clichés. I can’t really point out anything original in this episode besides the carrot hairclips that hasn’t been one before. I’m not a big fan of stereotypical clichés (thus why I loved Madoka so much) but I guess it worked okay… yeah, I have nothing much to say about the storyline here.
I liked Misaki’s seiyuu though. The overly cute voice worked for her character where the same voice on anyone else would have been annoying. Misaki is supposed to be the ideal sickly childhood friend, she’s supposed to have the softer voice. As for Tetsu’s seiyuu, yeah his voice was okay. It didn’t really stand out to me though.
Overall, from page to anime this story was done really well (it just wasn’t that interesting for me). If I didn’t know what was coming next, I might have dropped Sket Dance here. Fortunately, it gets less slice of life-ish soon and we move back into comedy. Or at least the next episode is more comedy orientated.
Less drama, more Genesis:
Genesis! I vaguely recall liking this chapter so we’ll see how the animated version goes. (Oh yeah, and Momoka has half an episode devoted to her too. We’ll see if I like her any better here.)
Look, even Bossun is excited. Go watch.
About Karakuri
University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Great dramatic episode! Actually pretty fun this week, surprised this series can get into the drama.
Wondering if this is going to be a 50 episode series? Or just 26?
POWUH: Meta Team and Ringleader Extraordinaire~ with 6433 comments
More comedy is better than slice of life. At least for this kind of show. I’m still enjoying the trio. ^^
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 305 comments
I thought it was a cute episode, even if it was predictable. I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories though. XD
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 22 comments
It feels like watching Sket Dance finally paid off. The first 5 episodes weren’t very good. In fact I even had to recall if I had watched episode 5 and couldn’t even remember what happened. Episode 6 was much better, but still left me wanting. Episode 7 did everything right. The comedy and story hit all the right notes. Now lets just hope it keeps it going that way.