天下制覇

  

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? 

Impressions:

I have to admit that I was predisposed to not like Sketchbook, but I was actually chuckling and smiling through most of the episode, so kudos to them. I’m sticking to my preseason comparison to Hidamari Sketch. The show is very similar, though at a high school level and with a larger cast of characters. Most are a lot of fun instead of wastes of space and while I’ve already forgotten everybody’s name (it bounces around from character to character), they’re all pretty well defined in their archetypes and fit into their roles rather well.

If I had to sum it up in a single phrase, it makes me think of Hidamari mixed with Azumanga. More energy and general wackiness than Hidamari, but not as much charisma as Azumanga and occasionally wanders off into some really dumb internal monologues. Production values are about where you’d expect from the Aria team. It’s not going to wow you, but everything is pretty well done and certainly pleasant enough to look at. The color palette and style actually kind of reminds me of Keroro Gunsou for some reason. I could just be going slightly insane after Higukai.

Anyway, in conclusion, with Higukai already on the menu for Mondays, I don’t think I’ll pick this up to blog, but I’ll still keep paying attention to it for at least a little while. It is a little more low key than I generally like my comedies to be, but anything that makes me laugh consistently has my seal of approval. There wasn’t really an OP this week, though the OP played. Whose-her-face, the animal loving mute, has a long voice over during it and it just shows scenes of her walking around. I suggest hitting up Subculture for your Sketchbook fix. Totali would do a much better job of covering it than me anyway.

No summaries for the first episodes. I write as I watch, and I don’t know if I’ll care about a show until after the first episode.