Series Review: Hidamari Sketch x365
Hidamari Sketch tells the story of 4 high school art students who live in the same apartment building. x365 follows their daily activities throughout their second year at the building.
Hidamari Sketch is not for everyone. Nothing happens. There are no life lessons or action or crying or implied sex or even hand holding. There is no dirty evil bitch and no big-chested lolis. It’s exactly as any summary says: you watch 4 high school girls go to school, eat sweets, and have fun.
I love slice of life shows. There are no awkward moments I have to pause and WTF at and no emotears over my favourite characters death. There’s always just enough of my kind of humor to keep me interested, which Hidamari does wonderfully. The animation is great and consistent. After 13 episodes the opening kind of hurt my ears, but that’s okay. That’s what Chapter Skip is for. I never really listened to the ending theme because I always skipped past it. The little cutscenes made me laugh. I especially enjoyed the “artsy” scenes with mood-based colour changes or closeup shots of random parts of the characters; it’s not something I see often in anime, but it keeps me on the lookout for scenes like that. My favourite is when they illustrate who’s walking with character-specific colours and footsteps.
I love the friendship Miya and Yuno have; they are polar opposites and it works so, so well. Even the small things they do–like write each other letters–is adorable to me. They make a good point, too: that sometimes it’s easier to get some things out via letter then speaking in person. Hiro and Sae interested me less because it’s the typical “subtle one-sided lesbianism” friendship. I wasn’t a big fan of Yoshinoya in season one, but x365 made me like her a lot more. Her “child at heart” attitude makes me laugh.. especially when she falls asleep playing video games. Not that I’ve done that before, of course.
I think my favourite part of Hidamari, as stupid as it is, is the faces the characters make. The |_____| and owl eyes faces are fierce.
all in all, I really enjoyed x365. I hope they make another OVA or another series, though the latter seems unlikely! In any case, I am following the English translations thanks to Yen Press (and their awesome wing logo!).