It’s rare for a comedy sequel to be better than the original. Here is one, though. The original Mitsudomoe had its moments of hilarity, but it also had many problems: milked out jokes, trying to be way more disgusting than what was tolerable, and the endlessly repeated forced misunderstandings between the characters. Those problems are actually fixed in the sequel, Mitsudomoe Zoryouchuu.
The keyword here is balance. In the sequel, the creators make sure that no character is overexposed or milked out. Everyone gets some decent time to show off his collection of quirks and jokes. Most episodes are separated into five sketches, and those sketches either centre around one theme or are completely random, but they continue to be different and dynamic. Even the final episode still is hilarious.
The humour in this series works especially well because of how it uses its characters: in the first season it relied a lot on innuendo humour, but this too is much more varied here. The series is at its best when there are a lot of different characters involved who all play off each other, where their emotions quickly change from one to the other. At these points it becomes incredibly dynamic and fun to watch.
The more solid execution also makes the characters a lot more down to earth and likable. The first season was way too full of toilet humour for this. The second season still has that, but it’s much more restrained. The result is that now, the characters in this show are much like your typical children with their childish antics and sometimes perverted minds. Most series about children in elementary school age try to portray them innocently, but Mitsudomoe goes out of its way to show their bratty and naive sides. The second season makes it surprisingly easy to relate to.
In Mitsudomoe 1, the ratio of sketches that worked versus the ones that didn’t work was about 50:50. In Mitsudomoe 2, this is around 75:25. Most episodes have one sketch that is absolutely hilarious, and several others that are quite funny. As for the bad ones though, those are the ones in which either the creators don’t try hard enough, the joke they use just falls flat, or the creators just fall back into the flaws of the first season by repeating jokes for too long. or just being disgusting for the sake of disgusting.
I wouldn’t recommend checking out Mitsudomoe 2 without having seen the first season, as it relies on running gags that were started in the first season. However, if you’ve seen the first season, then watching Mitsudomoe 2 will only make this show better. It has a number of bad sketches, but those are vastly outweighed by the good ones. It’s a much more solid and enjoyable comedy.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – Hilarious, solid and varied comedy, knows most of the time that it shouldn’t milk its jokes. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Some characters are just bad. Most of them are pretty good though, especially their chemistry is on fire in this season. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Bridge’s debut could have been much worse. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – It’s an elementary school. Yet much more believably presented than in the first season. |
Suggestions:
– Muteki Kanban Musume
– Ga Geijutsuka Art Design Class
– Hanamaru Youchien
I only watched to the first one, and dropped it. Care explaining the differences with Ika Musume and how this thing deserved almost Ika’s rating?