For those who only stumbled upon this blog recently, in the category Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope I review an episode of a different series each week. There are quite a number of series that I don’t want to blog weekly (like this one), but have enough to say about to fill one post. At the end of the season when I’ve run out of shows to review, I return to the best ones for some final impressions. I don’t do these Kaleidoscopes every single season (the previous Winter Season was just too small for it), but I found it a nice way to show a lot about the busy seasons.
In any case, manga adaptations have always been tricky, but Sket Dance actually has a clearly paved road to a very enjoyable series. Since the manga consists out of just random stories, if the creators are smart they can just compile the best chapters of the manga together and make a very enjoyable series. This is one of those cases where I’d really encourage shuffling around the chapters in order to make them paint a nice picture of its cast. The most important for Sket Dance will be bringing its school to life. Its premise really lends itself to showing many different people walking around the school grounds. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the manga, so I can’t really comment on whether or not this episode took these liberties, or whether it’s just a textbook adaptation.
In any case though, this episode served its purpose: it built up momentum. It perhaps wasn’t the best in terms of characterization, but it did have a lot of energy that it used really well. This episode was pretty much an entire fest of ADHD that was surprisingly enjoyable. What this series needs to do now is keep building further upon this momentum. If not, then this will just revolve into a scream-fest.
Because yeah, this show is pretty simple. Right now the characters are constantly screaming: if there is no order to that chaos then it will get boring pretty fast. The biggest problem right now is that all of the people that the Sket Dan needs to help are stereotypes and one-sided. Currently, they’re being saved by 1) one big twist to their characters, 2) the fast pacing of this show and 3) having them reappear throughout the other chapters. Take for example The World God Only Knows: that one lacks numbers 2 and 3 and as a result, none of these characters really end up standing out. (as a matter of fact, I’ve pretty much forgotten about most of them). Sket Dance needs to avoid this by making all of these people count, despite their short arcs. Right now though, I’d say that if it can keep up this pace, it’ll turn out fine. but it’s obviously not going to be anything amazing.
Rating: * (Good)
Good god you can’t have every character end up being a reoccurring character that counts.
There will be a lot of major supporting character that show up a lot though… the ED is a good clue for which ones from the first 100 odd chapters anyway..
And yes the pace is good since they’re animating 2 chapters per episode. I was fearing the worse and expecting a To Love Ru situation where they take one episode and turn what should be half an ep into one ep… and do a bad job of it.
The anime is following the manga fairly well, Chapter 1 (which is 50 pages compared to the usual 20) was Episode 1.
Chapter 2 was the last half of Ep 2, Chapter 4 was the first part of Ep 2. Chapters 5 and 6 will be Episode 3, so yes they’re shuffling some chapters around.
Anyway stick with this and you’ll see why it won the 2009 Shogakukan Manga Award for Shounen. The 2008 winner was Cross Game…
The pacing for this episode was very good, and the fact that they’re doing two chapters per episode is helping with this quite a bit I think. Keeps everything short and sweet, without much chance for filler to get in. I hope the show keeps going this route, as I enjoyed this episode far more than the first one.
What I’m hoping is that the anime covers the main characters’ backstories. I was only halfheartedly reading the manga until those came up.
Hey there!
Glad you liked this episode. And trust me –
“Right now though, I’d say that if it can keep up this pace, it’ll turn out fine. but it’s obviously not going to be anything amazing.”
You’re gonna be surprised if you keep watching it. 😉
The first chapters are pretty much the weaker ones.