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Digital
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Friday, 27 January 2012 00:00 |
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Page 1 of 2
 The idea behind Hidamari Sketch is simple enough - cute girls doing cute things, with not a hell of a lot of plot to get in the way. Which sounds like just the sort of thing to unwind to, but somehow it just didn't grab me...
For years, Yuno's dreamed of attending Yamabuki Arts High School; but now that she's been accepted, it means the scary prospect of moving away from her home and family for the first time! Fortunately, Yuno quickly learns that if her new neighbours at the eclectic Hidamari Apartments aren't technically family, at least the majority share the bond of being fellow art students. From second year students like Hiro and Sae, who try to behave like helpful older sisters (mostly successfully,) to her hyperactive new neighbour, classmate and best friend Miyako (who has the scariest apartment ever,) Yuno begins to build the support network she'll need for dealing with strange characters like her oddly masculine landlady, her cosplay obsessed home room teacher, her tooth-chattering principal and all of the other odd denizens who inhabit her chosen world of art....
Shows where people essentially do nothing can be quite therapeutic to watch - in their own ways, ARIA and K-On! would fall into that category, both shows I've enjoyed (particularly ARIA). It's the interactions between the characters that make them the pleasure they are - nothing guilty about it. Hidamari Sketch is clearly going for the same sort of feel - you get far more of the girls sitting around in their apartments and chatting than you ever do of their school lives, for starters - but for some reason it simply didn't connect with me the way the other two shows did, and I'll be damned if I can put my finger on why.
It's not the characters. Yuno is a little shy and uncertain about herself; new classmate Miyoko is her polar opposite, loud and brash, and the two make a good pairing. Living in the same apartment are Hiro, who comes across like a little old lady at times and has hair that Medusa would be proud of (if I could claim to have a favourite amongst the girls, Hiro would be it), while Sae is a budding author and the voice of sensibility. Seems to be a natural trait of blue-haired girls, that. We also get to see decent amounts of Yoshinoya-sensei, who's always getting in trouble for acting in non-teacherly ways; the school principal, who's clearly getting on in years; and the Hidamari Apartments landlady. Yoshinoya-sensei I could watch all day, as her antics really are the highlight of the show; the rest of the cast, Hiro aside, I could take or leave, and that's where the problem is: I didn't care enough about the characters to care about the way they were getting on together, and too often found my attention wandering away from the show, or boredom setting in.
I feel like a bit of a heretic saying that, too, as I'm aware that Hidamari is held in very high regard by a decent chunk of fandom, so it's clear that mileage is going to vary - as is often the case with comedy, to be fair. Ultimately, Hidamari Sketch failed to hit the mark with me, but being aware of many people that it did score highly with, I'd settle for saying "try before you buy". You might fare better with it than I did.
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