Hidamari Sketch

Information of Anime

Yuno, Miyako, Sae, & Hiro are students to an art school & are living at the Hidamari apartments.  Together, they work together on & off school.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story focuses on the four girls lives & activities.  It follows around the physical school year.  The main character, Yuno, thinks about her future as her education progresses.  The show ends at Christmas as the girls think back as to when they started moving into Hidamari apartment alone.

My Personal Review

Hidamari Sketch was something I decide to pick up after talking about it with a friend.  Told me it was slow, but I decided to see for myself since I didn't have any new anime shows to watch at the time.

Animation

The character designs are kind of like loli girls with small chubby faces.  They look all the same really with the difference being the eyes pretty much.  There are times where the girls would have different designs such as scribbled faces with small bodies or other SD type of forms.  Basically done for cuteness & humour.

The backgrounds are a mixture of animation & real life images.  Most of the real images are from objects like paintbrushes & teddy bears.  As the actual drawings, they are pretty dull with very little details in them.

The colours are on the dull side.  My assumption is basically to make the show like a light drama which is pretty much what it is.  Most of it is like cell work instead.

In terms of the animation movement, it's a mixture of realistic & silly stuff.  Most of the time it's silly stuff to show the show's light comedy.  It's pretty smooth with little choppiness.

Sound

The sound effects are on the realistic & silly side.  They are pretty clear & nicely cued.

The seiyuus here are ok.  They play their roles pretty well.  However, they seem to lack some energy to make the show interesting.  I'm not sure if it's the seiyuus or the characters itself.

The music is ballads mostly.  It's soft & easy on the ear.  For me, I think they are too easy as I don't notice them & don't really care for them.

Story

Mainly following the lives of the four girls.  There's nothing else from this.  Other than that, it's all real life situations really.  As for the characters, they seem to be lacking life to keep the show interesting.  They each have their own unique personalities, but they don't draw me in well. 

To keep the show intact with humour, there are some background stuff that you may want to pay attention to.  Sometimes the backgrounds will have some out of place items when the background switches from one another.  One example is a caterpillar growing to a butterfly.  First it shows you the bug when the four girls are talking then it switches to one of the girl's faces.  When it switches back to the previous background, something new happens.  It keeps going at it until it reached the butterfly stage.  There are a lot of these transitions in the show in many cases.  Plus, you have this strange thing that looks like a human wearing a bug costume which I have no idea what it's for nor what that is.

The show ends pretty well with the girls thinking back to the first day when they moved into Hidamari apartment.  Again, the show focuses on laidback life situations & I felt it wrapped up nicely.

Overall Conclusion

Hidamari Sketch is not a show for everyone.  It's aimed to an older audience.  Plus, it's quite dry to the point where it gets boring.  Personally, I don't recommend watching this as there are other anime shows out there that does a better job than this in keeping audience attention spans up.  However, if you are looking for a laidback show with very light comedy, this may be up your alley.

Hidamari Sketch gets a six out of ten. There is no main storyline & the show is a bit dry due to its presentation.  I didn't expect it to turn around anytime soon as it seems to be focused on this style of presentation & I was somewhat correct.  The ending though was pretty good in terms of ending the show.

Last updated on January 8, 2008