| Doki Doki School Hours #4 |
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| Friday, 12 January 2007 | |
 More antics from Mika-sensei and her class, as Doki Doki School Hours finishes up the TV episodes and moves into the "Gold" OVA episodes - which also sees the gang becoming gansters, detectives, and one big happy family, depending on which story you're watching. Doki Doki Detective Hours..?13 - Summer in Shonan: Don't Say Goodbye It's summer again, and the gang are off to the beach - even Horie-sensei's in on the trip, and drawing a lot of attention in her swimsuit, much to Nakayama's and Kudo's disgust. But mostly it's a lot of fun - until Mika gets sea-sick from sitting on her inflatable ring for too long. This being an overnight trip, there's accomodation to find - and thanks to the Old Man, there's free accomodation for all at a luxury hotel, complete with hot springs - although for some reason, they also seem to have a dinosaur and lost civilisation in the basement. And don't mention the waterfall...   14 - The Exchange Student and Okitsu, the Dark City When Kobayashi arrives at school early one morning, she finds the only other student there is the class' new exchange student, Anthony - fresh from America, and with blonde hair to prove it. He's also a complete anime / manga / bishoujo game nut, which quickly erodes the plus points that being a foreigner would normally give him, and he soon sets about trying to fit everyone into his anime stereotypes. On the plus side, he gets on really well with Watabe...   15 - Sports Festival Special! It's almost time for Okitsu's sports festival, and Suetake in particular is getting all worked up at the possibilities. For some of the others, though, it's no fun at all - Mika hates all forms of exercise, Kobayashi can't fit into her cheerleader uniform anymore, and Anthony and Seki are the cheerleader squad. What else could possibly go wrong?   16a - The Big Family and the Elusive Pork Ramen Fantasy-world time, and this time around Mika and her mom are running a ramen restaurant, while the rest of the gang are Mika's brothers and sisters. After 16 years away, their father returns from his search for the perfect pork ramen - through remote deserts and dangerous jungles he's travelled, which probably explains why he never found what he was looking for, but now he's home and ready to retake his place as head of the family - except mama's not interested, unless he can finally produce that perfect pork ramen... 16b - Big Sister Mika is Running Away? Still in happy-family-land, and after being taken for granted and picked on one too many times by her siblings Mika begins to get just a little miffed at being the big sister to such a bunch of ingrates. When Kobayashi and Suetake spot her coming out of an estate agents, though, it seems she's decided to leave them to their own devices - and so the plan to persuade Mika-oneechan that she doesn't want to leave swings into action...   Half high-school stuff - which is up to the usual standard, especially the sports day episode - and half fantasy-world stories, which I'm not quite as keen on. Anthony is an interesting addition to the show - I have a mental image in my head of what the stereotypical American anime fan is like, and he fits the image perfectly (complete with complaints about the quality of dubs and inaccurate subtitle tracks). <denial>I'm nothing like that, of course.</denial> Outside episode 14, though, he's barely used, which is a bit of a shame. The first of the fantasy stories is a play on the Untouchables theme, with Eliot Mika leading a group of investigators clamping down on the illegal manga trade - led, of course, by Al Watabe. It's fun enough, but the characters don't really work as well in detective mode as they do in high-school mode - there was a similar episode last volume that had a similar problem. Episode 16 does work well, though, as you can more easily see the gang as a family unit, and the various personalities play off each other really well in that setting. The rest of the disc covers more of the territory that every high-school show has to do - the beach episode and the sport day episode - and while it doesn't do anything too out-of-the-ordinary (dinosaurs and lost tribes excepted), it's enjoyable enough to watch. The only problem now is that by this stage of the show, DDSH is maybe beginning to get a bit stale. That may well be why the fantasy stories have been introduced, but they're a mixed bag in terms of how well they work. Personally, I still find the show to be worth watching, but people with less of a tolerance for seeing the same gags recycled might not be so generous. Only one volume to go, though, and I'm still looking forward to checking it out.  |
