All Good Comedy Anime Must Come to an End (Sket Dance Anime Review)

WARNING SPOILERS!

Genre: Comedy, School, Shounen

Rating: PG 13

Studio: Tatsunoko Production

Episodes: 77

Original run: April 7th 2011 – September 27th 2012

Available on: Crunchyroll

Languages Available: Japanese

Subtitles Available: Japanese, English

Manga Available: Yes

Overview:

Kaimei High School has a support club named Sket Dan. SKET stands for Support, Kindness, Encouragement and Troubleshoot. The three members of the club nicknamed Bossun, Himeko and Switch are dedicated to helping solve peoples problems and improving the students life both on and off campus. The series follows the club and all their comedic and serious mishaps.

Review:

I had never even heard of Sket Dance until watching the Gintama crossover episode that was created for both of the series. After watching the episode where Sket Dan appear in Edo I decided to look it up on Crunchyroll and thought it might make a good comedy show to fill the hole in my heart after I caught up with the Gintama series.

Fortunately giving this show a chance paid off and now I have an even bigger hole that needs to be filled by comedy in my heart now *sighs*. While Sket Dance cannot top Gintama for me it has got to be one of the best comedy anime I have seen so far. One of the reasons it’s probably so good is due to the fact that the creator Shinohara Kenta worked as an assistant under Sorachi Hideaki the creator of Gintama before creating Sket Dance so I’m sure he picked up a lot of good comedy and story telling techniques which do shine through and fall parallel with the work of Sorachi.

If you couldn’t tell by now I love comedy, I love to laugh as it makes me feel good and helps to brighten my day if I’m having a hard time. Comedy is a subjective thing as everyone has a different sense of humour. The humour used within Sket Dance is my kind of comedy as I love silly, slapstick comedy with lots of stupid scenarios, funny man/straight man set up and over the top reactions. I laugh out loud a lot when watching this series which says it all really. Bossun’s facial reactions alone were enough to crack me up.

I think by far one of the most well done elements of Sket Dance is the backstories of Bossun, Himeko and Switch. Like Gintama I didn’t realise I was in for a feels trip with these three as I thought I was walking into a purely comedy based show. But no, the backstories hit one by one throughout the series and each time it hurt more than ever. All three backstories were crafted well and having such tragic backstories really added more depth to their characters as you get to see a more series side of not only the characters but the show in general. The ability to switch between light hearted and more series tones shows the fact that Shinohara shows how well he is able to tell and develop stories.

The only downside of Sket Dance was that the romantic elements weren’t properly explored. Bossun and Himeko always seemed like they would make a good couple and it’s rather obvious in the series that everyone around them sees them as an old married couple already. Himeko’ should feelings for Bossun are somewhat explored a little but it’s only done through her internal monologue and nothing ever really comes of it. Instead there is more development done with Saaya as she likes Bossun. This development with Saaya honestly irked me as I don’t understand why they gave a decent amount of time developing how she felt over compared to Himeko. This leads to the next point of Switch and Momoka. They just dropped that possible relationship in there never mading anything concrete out of it. Instead of focusing on Saaya so much they could have directed the attention towards Switch and Momoka. The whole relationship element should have either been properly explored or left out completely because the development of it all left me unsatisfied.

The characters were fantastic in this series and although there were many most of them were very memorable. Every character had their own quirk and their own unique design so you couldn’t get anyone mixed up. I love how there was a character for all walks of life such as the occult, visual kei, samurai, etc. Even the Student Council had their own weird things going on. It made them likeable and if they appeared again in an episode they were instantly recognisable in design and personality.

The ending was very open ended with everything which is somewhat of a disappointment. It’s a series that could easily continue on but it is highly doubtable that it ever will. Whilst Sket Dance does share similar characters in comparison to Gintama such as Sket Dan are a group of helpers who often do odd jobs for people, it does hold it’s own as a series. It’s in no way copying Gintama but has taken much influence from it and Shinohara has made his own world with those building blocks.

If you’re looking for a longer running comedy anime to sink your teeth into then I recommend giving Sket Dance a chance.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!

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