SKET Dance - Episode 3

When you have a past as something of a delinquent and a near-legendary reputation to go alongside it, I suppose it's inevitable that your history will catch up with you sooner or later - such is the problem facing Hime Onizuka in this third episode of SKET Dance.

Everything seems pretty normal (or at least as normal as it gets for the SKET-dan anyway) as this episode begins, with Hime finding herself forced to deal with a trio of troublemakers and wannabe delinquents, before going on to help the school softball team by taking part in their match the next day.

It's here that things take a turn for the worse, as rumours which reach her ears about a girl known as "Onihime" (Hime's old nickname) causing trouble soon leaders into more serious problems as Onizuka's trademark hockey stick weapon is switched out of her bag before those aforementioned delinquents return to get their revenge and take Hime to the mercies of their leader.  Of course, it's up to Hime's fellow SKET-dan members to save her, which they duly do with a surprising ease before Onizuka herself is faced with the prospect of returning to her old ways.

Following the improvements in episode two (which still weren't exactly stellar in all honesty), this was another decidedly average episode of SKET Dance - it managed to be mildly amusing on occasion with its fourth-wall breaking and daft antics, but this was offset by an incredibly predictable plot that screamed "seen it all before" from every pore while trying too hard to be sweet and inoffensive to give said story any impact.  That pretty much sums up SKET Dance so far as a whole - an effort which almost feels like it's been written by pinching old scripts from other series, toning them down markedly and then twisting them to fit this show's characters.  The result is about as blandly mediocre as you can imagine, and I'm sorely tempted to drop this series while it appears to be going nowhere noteworthy.