Saturday 15 November 2008

Hyakko - Episode 5

After a one week break, Hyakko is back, complete with its mildly amusing but never quite entirely funny plots and mildly likeable but never quite loveable characters.

Episode five of the series if basically segmented into two chunks. The first sees some further results from the last episode's selling of photographs of all the freshman girls, with one individual in particular seemingly garnering a lot of attention from someone. That individual is of course... Torako, not Ayumi as everyone immediately assumes, and to be honest that conclusion is worked towards and revealed in a rather clumsy way which rather ruined this particular part of the story if I'm honest.


Speaking of Torako, she gets plenty of time in the spotlight in the second half of this episode - After ending up late for school, she finds herself bumping into Ushio, a delinquent with a love of manga and cats (which makes her a-okay in my book). They end up hanging out together for most of the school day, getting a little "over-exicted" over a karaoke session in the process, before finally deciding to make the trip to school and being duly punished for their lateness.

Once again, Hyakko somehow manages to miss its real point during this episode, trying its best to be humourous but never really succeeding in reaching those dizzy heights. To be fair it does raise the odd smile, and I can't find it within myself to moan about any of the characters in particular as they're all unique and pleasant enough, but the series somehow continues to lack that cutting edge at delivering the killer blow/punchline that seems to come so easily to series like Hidamari Sketch and Lucky Star. That lack of edge alone is what puts Hyakko into a different, lower, league to its esteemed rivals, and I really don't see it managing to remedy that now we're five episodes into the series.

No comments: