Tonari no Seki-kun Episode 13
What They Say:
Class is in session at a certain high school. While the teacher isn’t looking, a boy named Seki-kun is playing games by himself on his desk, while the girl who sits next to him, Yokoi-san, observes (or interferes or participates). Each time, Seki-kun’s games reach unimaginable levels… And this time the game is…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With most of the episodes focusing on events in the classroom, this one shifts us to the outside a bit as the gym class with the pool is involved here as the kids learn some basic safety lessons and the like. Of course, while Yokoi is doing her best, Seki has brought his toys to the pool and is generally just goofing off with friends and getting away with it. Amusingly, she does her best to hide the toys for a bit so that he can focus on the actual lesson at hand, but it goes badly when one of the other kids in the class finds them and starts messing with them, which she’ll obviously feel really badly about. That leads her to doing her best to rescue things and it’s just cute to see the way she deals with this, realizing her mistake and doing her best to fix it before Seki can find out and really get upset, since he is kind of childish in a lot of ways.
In Summary:
While I do like when the series breaks from the norm and gets out of the standard classroom, such as this episode and the art class, it does have a different feeling to it that keeps it from being just as enjoyable. There’s less of a focus on Seki and his antics and when that happens, like it does here, it just feels like it’s not as sharp and funny as it is when he’s coming up with his creative ideas. I do like the pool shift and how Yokoi tries to get Seki to ignore his toys for a bit and focus on the class, but it just kind of spills out in a weird way that doesn’t really grab you the same as other episodes.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.