Hyakko - Episode 4

After watching the last episode of Hyakko, I commented on how far short this series falls of the true classics of its genre, despite being easy enough to watch in its own right. To be fair, episode four improved things a little along these lines, while still not looking like a challenger to Hidamari Sketch and the like.

The first half of the episode sees the girls take to the dining hall for lunch, with Torako deciding that there are few jokes better than hitting the "large serving" button for everything her friends decide to order (although not succeeding in every case), but after some mildly amusing rant about eating with "Japanese pride" it turns out that her own eyes are bigger than her stomach.


The second half takes us to a sketching lesson, with the class splitting into pairs taking it in turns to spend periods of time drawing one another. It probably goes without saying what kind of chaos this descends into, with ever more sexy poses being suggested by some quarters, and Torako and Ayumi ending up as stars of their own photo shoot (with the former in particular suprising all and sundry for her increased cuteness factor simply by letting her hair down).

Overall, this has probably been the best episode of Hyakko so far - Not hugely hilarious or laugh out loud funny by any stretch of the imagination, but still entertaining enough to raise a few smiles, and slowly but surely dragging me to the point where I actually quite like most of the main characters rather than simply feeling an aura of apathy towards them. If it can keep on improving then it might at least manage to produce a memorably moment or two during the remainder of the series, but for the moment Hyakko's greatest claim is that it's a reasonable way to pass some time.