Hyakko - Episode 3

Hyakko thus far has pretty much set out its stall as a decidedly average school-based slice-of-life anime series, which certainly hasn't managed to command the laughs of some of the other notable shows in this genre. Can episode three fare any better?

In all honesty, not really, with episode three giving us more of the same. The first half of this episode introduces us to class rep Andou, who has delegated that Torako as "morals officer", requiring her to check that everyone is following the school's uniform restrictions. Andou comes along to offer support for this activity, and from there (as if it wasn't made pretty clear even before this point) we're simply subjected to a long, slow (and not particularly funny) build-up to the announcement of Andou's sexuality.


Thankfully, the second half of this episode is a big improvement, introducing another new character in the form of Chie Suzugasaki, a bit of a dab-hand at robotics and engineering who gave me a bit of a chuckle at her laughing evilly over a hot soldering iron right at the beginning of this segment. Somehow, the main quartet end up getting drawn into the robotics lab by some giant robot Chie is wandering around with, which leaves us with an amazed Suzume asking some relatively amusing questions about the robot's capabilities, and the eventual creation of both a robot Torako and Suzume.

Once again, Hyakko proves itself to be quite easy to watch while falling far, far short of the kind of humour and laughs I've perhaps come to expect from this kind of series on account of the likes of Hidamari Sketch and its ilk. I'm not sure if it's trying too hard to be funny or not hard enough, but either way it simply fails to do anything to make it stand out from what is a not insubstantial crowd in its genre, which leaves it with its work really cut-out if it wants to make an impact. Still, at least the second half of this instalment was a step in the right direction, so perhaps there's still hope that Hyakko can deliver some genuinely, laugh out loud funny segments over the remaining ten episodes.