My main problem with the Sket Dance manga is the hopeless attempts at humour. Every single response was depicted as a massive over-reaction. It was never funny and always irritating. They pretty much did away with that in the anime. There’s a few over-reactions, but they keep them down to scenes that are perhaps supposed to come off as humour rather than every single damn time, such as Beelzebub. It’s still kinda annoying when the anime does it, but compared to the manga it’s a totally different experience.

Some other problems still remain. The artwork and character designs are still as lame as ever. The only remotely interesting piece of character artwork is Bossun’s hat, and you realise how generic he looks otherwise when he takes said hat off. The animation is decent though, especially since, for whatever reason, I was expecting flash quality animation. It’s not at the level of Hanasaku Iroha or Nichijou or anything, but it still serves it’s purpose pretty well (on that note, funny how the two shows with the best animation this season have the least need for it). In short, it’s a massive improvement on an incredibly shitty manga while still telling the exact same story from the first chapter of the manga. I’m not interested, but I guess those people who have no taste at all who like the manga must be delighted at this adaptation. Or maybe they live off a different set of values to me and wanted more yelling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I do have one complaint though, and it’s a complaint I don’t often get to make. The BGM is atrocious. Normally BGM’s are only ever mentioned it reviews as a good thing, even in reviews of otherwise terrible anime. It it’s not mentioned, that’s generally because it was utterly forgettable. But Sket Dance manages to have a BGM that actively detracts from the viewing experience. Every single track it played was reprehensible, either through awfully timed guitar riffs or ear-grating boopity bop music that plays when they think they’re making a joke. The Youtube video above comes from Chrome Shelled Regios, the only other anime I’ve seen that I was turned off mainly by the BGM, but that was only because of that single track. Nothing played in Sket Dance quite matches up to the ‘DDR played in fast forward’ that is that Regios track, but what makes the Sket Dance one worse is each and every song is bad. This makes the silent moments in the show worse because I’m actively preparing my eardrums to be assaulted by the next track instead of paying attention to what’s going on.

There is no such thing as drop­ping an anime forever. When I use the term ‘dropped’ that does not mean that’s the last I’ll see of that anime in my life. Drop­ping a show means that I don’t have the enthu­si­asm to watch this show cur­rently and at a later date I’ll return to that anime. This later date may be the time when I’m stuck on a desert island with noth­ing other than a port­able dvd player and a ‘Lucky Star’ box­set, but I will one day return and give the anime another shot. With this in mind, com­bined with the fact that I’m only 4 series away from ‘drop­ping’ 100 anime, accord­ing to my MAL account, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a look back at all those series I’ve dropped, recog­nise why I dropped them and eval­u­ate when I should give them another go.

Canaan

Dropped After: 5 episodes

Why I dropped it: Canaan actually started off pretty well and looking back I now know why. Canaan had one large flaw, that being its plot. The first few episodes of Canaan didn’t tell us the plot, just showed us some well-animated explosions and stuff. So for the first 3 episodes we were treated to hot women duking it out, except with an annoying lack of substance behind that. Then they showed the plot. And it was the most retarded piece of shit I have ever seen. Who the hell wrote this crap? Who on earth came up with the plot to this?

Rebirth Chances: Below average. It only finished pretty recently and I’ve seen nothing to hint that I would really want to continue it. It has gotten some good reviews but they all seem to be from those yuri-loving freaks. If I really want to see a women hump a dead man then maybe I’ll pick it up again, but not for quite a while anyway. Maybe I’ll forget how bad the plot was.

Chaos;Head

Dropped After: 6 episodes

Why I dropped it: Again, Chaos;Head started off fairly interesting. Creepy mystery murder and the extremely unsettling marriage of what appeared to be Shuffle and Paranoia Agent, I was actually quite interested in seeing where this had to go. Looking back, I can’t actually pinpoint what it was that made me drop this in the end.…wait, why did I drop this? I actually genuinely can’t remember now.

Rebirth Chances: Average. As I’ve just said, I genuinely can’t remember why I dropped this, so picking it up again seems like the obvious option. On the other hand, Chaos;Head is used by those who did finish it as an example of a shitty eroge adaptation. Considering how shitty eroge adaptations are anyway, that is quite a feat. Anyone out there actually like this show?

Chrome Shelled Regios

Dropped After: 1 episode

Why I dropped it: Now this probably holds the record for the most unusual reason I’ve ever dropped a series for. The first episode wasn’t that bad. In fact, I distinctly remember it having a hot purple-haired girl and purple haired girls make me drool. The reason I dropped it was actually because of the BGM. It sounded like DDR music played in fast forward. It was so bad that I actually turned off the sound while watching the episode and just read the subs. Needless to say, you can’t watch an anime like that.

Rebirth Chances: Low. Reviews are generally poor of Chrome Shelled Regios. People usually harp on about how great a character Felli was and that she never got enough screentime. I haven’t found any reviews that say whether the horrible BGM stops after the first episode so I’m extremely wary of touching this thing again.

Clannad ~After Story~

Dropped After: 7 episodes

Why I dropped it: Clannad shouldn’t have been my type of anime. Moe, dorama, heck, all they needed was to add some yuri for it to be a tailor-made anime for me to dislike. But opn the contrary, I really liked the first season. Tomoya was a magnificent character who reminded me almost scarily of myself and the anime itself was surprisingly funny. The serious moments were a bit meh but they were few and far between and often worked quite well thanks to the great BGM and artwork. These first 4 episode of After Story, combined with what the VNfags said, showed a clear sign that this season would depart from pretty much every reason I liked Clannad and emphasise what I disliked about it. It would be like the second season of Honey and Clover except worse. So, not wanting my image of Clannad ruined, I panicked and dropped the thing.

Rebirth Chances: Very high. I know from the reviews that it does exactly what I feared it would do but I never gave it a chance to reach those episodes (the first few episodes were mainly stupid filler anyway). For a character I found myself relating to as much as Tomoya, I really owe it to myself to see how he grows up. I may not enjoy those later humourless episodes. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are about as far away from my personal preferences as there could possibly be, but I have to at least give them a go. It must be rated #1 on MAL for a reason.

Denpa teki na Kanojo

Dropped After: 1 episode

Why I dropped it: This episode was far from being bad. In fact, the first episode was very well made and achieved exactly what it set out to achieve. The thing is, what it set out to achieve was to creep the fuck out of the viewer as much as possible. This wasn’t Elfen Lied where the main objective was to tell a story and the creepy gore came as an add-on. The only intention of this anime was to fuck you up. Why on earth would I want to continue watching that?

Rebirth Chances: Average. The reviews of the second episode were very good and there was a week where there was a bit of hype over it, which certainly tempted me to give the second episode a shot. But.….kowai~

::Note:: Do offer me recommendations as to what I should pick up again and is there a different way of approaching an anime I’ve dropped. I’ve already got the Ah My Goddess OVA on my to-watch list.

My Rating System Explained!

A = If you watch anything this season, watch this

B = Very good, sometimes surprisingly so.

C = If you have the time, you should check this out

D = Not my kind of thing, I won’t be watching this

E = Bad. Very bad, ignore this show

F = Frustratingly awful

White Album

I wonder why do previews sometimes. I mean, I knew White Album wasn’t going to be my sort of anime, yet I instantly downloaded it anyway. The only way I ever like these Shonen Romances is if it’s side-splittingly funny, like Clannad. But nope, the girls are those moe blobs I’ve come to expect from these types of shows.

I’d find it hard to reccomend this even to Shonen Romance lovers. It wasn’t exactly all terrible, the ‘goddess of the day’ scene was actually quite funny. But the mood just isn’t right and the dialogue all sounds strained. It just isn’t any good.

Rating: E

Sora Kake Girl

I’ve already made my thoughts clear on this show, but I suppose it’s worth saying again: This is one of the worst shows I have ever seen, and I really do mean that.

Raing: F–

Chrome Shelled Regios

I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from this show so I was actually pleasantly surprised. It’s about some sort of messed up future involving giant woodlice and other such ugly bugs and fighting and so on. But the fighting was, surprisingly, the dull part, mainly because the animation isn’t great. It was the character interactions that was far more fun to watch.

The balance is just right with the characters. The dialogue is well scripted and believable. There are quite a lot of characters but for once the plot isn’t slowed down by the numbers. Besides, the purple haired girls makes me drool.

But there is one thing that makes this show almost unwatchable: The music. It sounds like DDR music put into fast-forward. I’ve never watched a show where the music makes it unwatchable but I think I may have a first. If I continue to watch this I may just have to turn the volume off altogether.

Rating: C–

Maria Holic

Even if I didn’t already know from doing the season preview, you can spot the style of SHAFT from a mile away. Their style is an odd one, one which I’m still not sure whether I like it or not. Plus there’s also SHAFT’s type of humour, again not something I find myself laughing all that much at.

Maria Holic does exactly what it says on the tin, and what it says on the tin is very weird indeed. Yuri, traps, maids, nosebleeds, all sorts of odd stuff stacked in together that actually works quite well. The trap in particular is so fantastically evil, I already love her…him…yeah

But I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it. I’m wary since, knowing SHAFT, this all could get old rather quickly. I hope they can keep this from going stale

Rating: C+

Yeah, not much great in this lot but don’t worry. I’ll be doing another bunch soon enough, including Ride Back and Kurokami. And trust me, those two are certainly worth watching.