GOOD NEWS! There are definite improvements over last week! YAAAAAY! More comedy from Sket here as opposed to the mystery stuff it does occasionally. They shoved in a lot of extra scenes here to take up time but they were pretty funny so the end result is alright. So anyways, on to the actual episode.

The Sket Dan join a tournament hosted by a cell phone company this week as per the request of Yabasawa, who wants the ‘3’ mouth from the grand prize (consisting of rare avatar parts) for her avatar. At first the Sket Dan are sceptical if they should be competing over a couple of pixels, but it turns out that the Student Council are involved too (so they join of course). Apparently due to the popularity of their manga, the Student Council were asked them to participate. Of course, Tsubaki is against it because it has nothing to do with school, but once he hears that the Sket are participating, he’s all for it. Short a person on their side, the Sket recruits Shinzo, who apparently is hooked on cell phone games so his presence is actually relevant.

…Looking now, the colors for the screencaps here clash really badly

The actual tournament arrives and both sides are all fired up and both of them make it through the unanimated preliminary rounds with no problems. It then jumps to the finals where the Sket and Student Council finally start the showdown. The final consists of 5 rounds of challenges based on cell phone games with the last round as a secret. Luckily for the Sket Dan, all of the challenges mentioned are things they’re good at so planning who does what is relatively easy.

Of course with things going this well, something has to go wrong and Yabasawa gets a call that Yeti, the annoying monkey from before, escaped. She promptly leaves and the Sket are suddenly left in a panic because they need a replacement for her. Bossun then reorders their names on the board to allow time for Yabasawa’s replacement Momoka to show up. When the first round comes up, it turns out that Himeko is doing the cooking challenge thanks to Bossun screwing around with the order. Her competition is Michiru from the Student council, who apparently is good at cooking and who even got Tsubaki (who apparently is really picky, what a surprise) to eat.

Can you say ‘unlikeliest matchups’?

The Sket are nervous at first because they’re not entirely sure if Himeko can cook or not (lol) but she seems pretty determined. When the match starts, it turns out that Himeko CAN actually cook to everyone’s surprise and meanwhile, Michiru is too busy posing for his fanbase to start cooking (though he does start eventually). The judging begins and Himeko’s dish is unveiled. It turns out she made some kind of egg chicken dish and when they try it, it tastes pretty good. When its Michiru’s turn, his dish turns out to be just a simple omelette. However, his simple dish shows his skill more and he wins the round. Not sure if I understand this logic, but I’m not a food critic so whatever.

Overall, the Sket take the loss pretty well (their support for Himeko was actually really touching) and the next round is Shinzo versus Tsubaki. The whole challenge to this is that they have to pop all 5 balls on their opponent to win. Both seem to be evenly matched, until Shinzo draws the ‘first blood’ by popping one of Tsubaki’s balls (…that sounds a bit wrong) and we get a freeze frame cliff hanger ending.

Things Metanorn should do someday after world domination:

Hire a samurai

Hire a maid

Hire this guy

Hire someone who can cook for us. Oh wait, we already did that.

Final Thoughts:

This episode was great for a number of reasons. First of all, character cameos in the tournament were amusing and secondly, the animation was better. Sure, there were still corners cut, but at least they were all consistent heights this time. Anyways yeah, overall it was a good episode with good pacing. The introduction was a bit too long for my tastes, but the cooking section went by pretty fast. You know, I normally hate cliff hanger endings, but this one is alright because I already know what happens it was actually a pretty decent place to end off.

So yeah, Sket Dance is only going to be 14 episodes long and this tournament seems like it will last a couple episodes so it should wrap up rather nicely. However, if this tournament does take all 3 of the last episodes, just when is Dante getting an episode? I mean, why even both including him in the opening if he’s not going to show up? However, if they just shove him in the last episode it would be extremely anticlimactic. Yeah, I guess I’m a bit nervous over how this will all work out, but hopefully it goes well!

Preview:

The end of the episode is pretty much just a plug for the Student Council with Kuromoto commenting that Yagi still seems down (…do I even have to comment at this point?). However, the next episode is a continuation of the tournament! The battle of the megane characters is on after Shinzo’s! Will the Sket prevail!? Will Shinzo avenge Himeko?! Until next time!