Seitokai no Ichizon - Episode 8

When Ken Sugisaki turns up at the student council with a rather young girl in tow, the other council members are quick to leap for their phones and call the police - Given his reputation and behaviour throughout this series thus far, you can hardly blame them either.

Thankfully, Ken hasn't taken quite such a perverted turn just yet, as the girl in question is in fact Elise, the younger sister of journalism club member Lilicia (who you may remember from an earlier episode) who apparently and conveniently needs looking after, a job with which Sugisaki is somehow saddled.


What follows is quite easily the funniest episode of Seitokai no Ichizon - Even after the calling the police gag I just mentioned which got a laugh out of me from the off, Elise's behaviour as she plays various children's games in a decidedly odd fashion proved to be amusing from beginning to end, from her version of playing "Doctor" which could give Casualty a run for its money through to playing with dolls in... well, a rather disturbing fashion really.

Of course, council president Sakurano eventually gets fed up of all these interruptions, and her attempts to pull rank on Elise fall rather flat, particularly when it comes to proving her intelligence (which also gives us some genuinely funny moments in itself, including a Kyouran Kazoku Nikki reference). We eventually end up with the predictable and eye-rollingly pointless sentimental moment between Ken and Kurimu, but you can't expect this series to suddenly get everything right I suppose.

Quite frankly, I hope this particular episode of Seitokai no Ichizon is stored in a pickle jar and used as the basis for all future episodes of this series as it was leaps and bounds above pretty much anything that it's delivered previously - It was sharp, the gags hit the mark far more frequently and perhaps more importantly the jokes had a little more thought behind them beyond just throwing out random anime and manga references here and there (although even when it did, those references simply seemed funnier). I hold little hope of this being the start of a new dawn for Seitokai no Ichizon, but at least I've finally found a good reason for sitting through the series thus far in the form of this solitary ray of sunshine from the midst of the show's broader mediocrity.