Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb – 03

Ah, the familiar Shaft headtilt. Nice to see it back.

I found the 2nd episode of Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb to be a bit bland, showing the dark side of the cute girls doing cute things genre. Thankfully, the laughs returned with a vengeance in this 3rd episode, with some nice visual touches as well.

It’s just so wide. I can’t stop smiling.

Miyako poking Hiro’s fat fun at Hiro’s weight just doesn’t stop being funny.

This art is beautiful and reminds me that Okami HD should be out soon. That is all.

Oh god, I love those googly eyes. This shot is perfect.

I love that Miyako managed to get a split milk mustache.

Keeping it classy, Shaft. Speaking of class, how are the boys of this one so well behaved?

Miyako’s trick reminded me a lot of that scene in Zoolander. At least this one is physically possible. Oh, and lucky boys.

I can’t stop laughing. Kana Asumi as Yuno is just so good. Especially after hearing her in so many roles since the first Hidamari Sketch such as Nyaruko-san.

Wow, I think I might have my new favorite finger orientation in anime. A daintily unusual way of counting.

I want to point to a couple shots that I thought were particularly nice. This one of the Hidamari 6 playing Old Maid caught my eye due to the single cut pan. A common tool in live action film, but surprisingly unusual in anime. It simulated a rotating camera in the center of the room, and this kind of pan is pretty easy in animation. The single continuous shot following the conversation was an excellent way of getting us sucked into the flow of the game these girls were playing.

This other shot is relatively common in openings and endings, but I haven’t seen it as much within actual episodes. Another simple pan with an even simpler background of just the blue sky. Like with the card game, I love the way the conversation flows with the camera, front to back this time. There is a brief moment when it manages to fit all 6 of them on screen at once.

One of the main reasons that the Hidamari Sketch series is the one cute-girls-doing-cute-things series that I like is because of the visual touches like this. I also like that it pushes things over the top for comedy, often into pretty mean territory. This is a beautiful, hilarious world, and this episode did a wonderful job showing it.

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A math/science geek and a self-dubbed cynical optimist. I don't care if it's deep, if it can make me feel something or laugh, it's fine in my book. @lvlln
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8 Responses to “Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb – 03”

  1. MikADo says:

    miyako is the sole reason im watching this show ;P
    i wont say the others aren’t appealing, but miyako somehow has become my personal best 😀

    • lvlln says:

      Miyako is indeed the best. She’s a refreshingly free spirit. Watching her be herself is enough to put a huge grin on my face.

    • Yippy says:

      Hear, hear! Her VA Mizuhashi Kaori’s unique and fitting voice was a joy to listen to as well.

  2. AllenAndArth says:

    cosplay show in class with bloomers…now i’ve seen everything

  3. Yippy says:

    It wasn’t hilarious all the way though, but it’s the best among the three episodes I’ve seen of Hidamari so far.

    Nice observation on the visual shots, I never would’ve noticed them on a watch. Maybe I should be paying more attention…

    Btw, anyone know why the girls were so shocked after hearing that they ate a ton of garlic? And why did they drink milk after that? I’ve a hunch that it has something to do with bodily functions or a previous joke, but I’ve got nothing.

    • lvlln says:

      The girls were worried about garlic breath, since they’d be going into school the next morning with all their classmates. Hence they were embarrassed when the landlady showed up and noticed the garlic smell. The milk was to cover up the smell of garlic from their mouths.

  4. Highway says:

    I’ve been watching this since you guys suggested it after the first episode, and it’s been nice. I find myself (maybe inevitably) comparing it to YuruYuri, and I think I prefer the more obvious humor in YuruYuri a little more, although a lot of that certainly could be colored by the masterful final Snow White play gag in YuruYuri (to me that was about as perfect a pay-off gag for two cours of character traits as you can get).

    To me, Hidamari seems to be in the middle of a continuum between YuruYuri and Tamayura. That’s after seeing three episodes of this current season, I don’t have the background of the others, but there’s that wistful yet happy feeling that is so prevalent in Tamayura in this show as well.

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