SKET Dance – 17

A rock festival? This calls for unnecessary drama!

Wow this is out way later than I intended. I somewhat recently acquired Final Fantasy VIII and have been too distracted by all the pixels and the fact that Squall wears his pants up to his armpits to write much. Anyways, sorry for the delay and on to Sket Dance.

The episode starts off with the principal playing guitar again (no old man sweat this time though thank god). He even recaps the last episode just in case you forgot what happened a week ago. Not that anything actually happened.  So yeah, for the first time ever, the Sket have all joined different bands and are rivals.

My guitar pick is the guitar pick that will pierce the heavens!

…Only that isn’t happening anymore because everyone in Himeko’s band minus Himeko has the flu. Switch’s band has also broken up due to artistic differences. His group of otaku spent more time trying to come up with a band name than actually practicing, so he left. Bossun heads off to go practice.

Luckily, not all otaku resemble these people

We witness Sugisaki (prodigy violin girl) at a music lesson with her teacher telling her that she’s not that good and that there are plenty of people at her level. This does nothing for the poor girl’s self-esteem, but she still goes to teach Bossun the bass later. He asks her how she got into the violin and she talks about how she saw it on TV as a child and was immediately interested. He also coaxes her to play for him and she does really well (better than most other randomly played instruments in anime).

Sugisaki doesn’t seem that confident in herself, but Bossun tells her that she doesn’t need talent to follow her dreams, but courage instead. Just as he convinces her to come to his performance, the drummer from his band tells him that the guitarist sprained his wrist and the band is breaking up. Sugisaki seems depressed with this news, but there’s nothing anyone can do.

Back in the Sket room, everyone is pretty depressed and have nothing to do. Finally, Bossun suggests that the three of them form a band and informs Switch and Himeko of Sugisaki’s circumstances. The three agree and Bossun comes up with a band name by combining all of their previous band names. Sket Bombers+Ch Ch+Yabasawa Books= The Sketch Book.

They go to the Student Council to get their band approved but Tsubaski doesn’t like it. What a surprise. Apparently the deadline for band signups has passed and that means the Sket can’t join. However, the President says they can join, but tells them that their performance had better be good or else. Tsubaki has no choice but to agree and Bossun states that he’s not performing to compete, but instead because there’s someone he wants to hear him play. The Sket all get together to mentally prepare themselves for the actual performance, but we don’t actually get to see them practice.

If only musical instruments were this easy to acquire in real life

Suddenly, it’s the festival and Daisy is the MC. However, this doesn’t matter for long because GACKT IS SINGING with his visual kei band as the first performance. The rest of the bands don’t matter until Roman starts singing in a really ridiculous looking outfit. Also, there are like, 5 of her on the stage. However, this is just some effect of the Otome Filter and Bossun and company are getting ready backstage.

This. This is why I watch this show.

This is not a reason I watch this show.

Bossun is sure that Sugisaki will come watch and tells the Student Council just that. However, as he says this, she is on a train flashing back about her cancelling her trip to Germany. She looks at her phone to see Bossun’s text about asking her to come watch him, but just looks depressed.

The Student Council play next, and then the Sket are finally on, but still no Sugisaki. Meanwhile, we see her walking painfully slow down some street. Finally, she turns around, but only arrives to see the end of the performance. Luckily they play one more song, which manages to reach her.

Later, the Sket see her off at the airport. Turns out that their music gave her courage to go to Germany after all. Hooray for the power of music. It also mentions that Dante’s band made first place, the Student Council were second and the Sket won third.

Final Thoughts:

Apparently there was some sort of contest on which song the Sket first played on the official site as well as a contest for forming a real life band called The Sketchbooks so the vocalist they used for both songs was some guy who won the contest. Though the singing does sound pretty close to Hiroyoki Yoshino’s voice. I’m impressed. It’s a bit confusing, but an interesting concept nonetheless. They also have the songs from the festival (plus a few others) on the site with music videos, which unfortunately just recycle animation from the episodes, but are still amusing. Roman’s is strangely catchy.

All things considered, this episode was levels above last weeks and I’m not just saying that because of the music inserts (which were awesome, by the way). INTERESTING STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED! WHAT A CONCEPT! Yeah, this episode was loads more satisfying than last week, and not much happened this week either. However, the story was sweet and was one of those ones that make you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. …It’s episodes like these that make me notice how cliché the series is. Seriously, this show is pretty unoriginal when it comes to stories. However, I think that the uniqueness of the characters that turn this from being completely cliché and boring into something interesting. Sket Dance just wouldn’t be Sket Dance without Bossun making that weird face he does, Switch being awesome or Himeko beating someone up just because she can.

Preview:

Uwah~! Hyperion! I’ve been looking forward to this!