The Show:
Volume two of Doki Doki School Hours is much like the first one with
many of the same gags and jokes reworked once again. The concept
of a short teacher trying to control a bunch of students with odd personality
quirks has worked well before, most notably in Azumanga Diaoh, but this
series just isn't able to breath life into the characters of humor into
the scripts.
Series background:
Suzuki Mika goes to Okitsu High School everyday. Thought she's
really short, she's not a student, she's a teacher. She's in charge
of the sophomore's, Class 2A, and it's pretty hard at times since most
of her students tower over her.
The class has a lot of unique characters too. There's Suetake,
the good looking jock who isn't too bright, and Seki, another attractive
boy, except he feels more comfortable dressing up as a girl. He's
not gay though, Kudo is. Kudo's the boy who has a crush on Suetake,
though the jock doesn't realize it. The homosexuals aren't limited
to the boys either. Kitagawa is a statuesque girl who's pretty smart,
but she has a crush on the teacher Mika. These characters, and more,
try Suzuki's patience as she tries to get through the day.
Each episode is a day in Mika's life. (Mika-sensei to her students.)
She gets teased by her students, pleads with her pupils to study, and generally
tries to make order out of the chaos that surrounds her. At home
she has to deal with her demanding mother and her overindulgent father.
This volume:
This time we get to hear what everyone did on their summer vacation,
watch the class prepare to put on a play for the school cultural festival,
see who Wataba gets to join his manga club, and view the Christmas festivities.
Though there are a lot of comic situations, this volume just doesn't hit
the funny bone. It is just more of the same from the last volume.
They go through the same jokes that were done before, only changed ever
so slightly. Kitagawa hits on Mika-sensei, Kudo lusts after Suetake,
and Seki continues to dress as a girl.
The new jokes aren't that funny either and are easily predictable.
In the show that takes place after summer break, Mika asks the students
to turn in their homework but no one did it. When she gets mad, one
of the pupils complains that Mika didn't have any homework to do over the
break. At that point she realizes (get ready for this...) that she
forgot to write up the test she's supposed to give them! Wa-ha-ha.
That sure is a knee slapper. With the low quality of humor, I'd assume
this was a show aimed at children but the many sexual jokes take the show
out of that category.
The DVD:
Audio:
The disc comes with a choice of the original Japanese soundtrack or
an English dub, both in stereo. I alternated tracks with each episode,
and I enjoyed the original track a lot more. Though I thought
the English voice for Mika sounded better (The Japanese track has Mika
sounding like a young kid which is a bit irritating), the English cast
didn't fit as well as the Japanese voices and the actors just weren't as
expressive as they should have been. It sounded like they were just
reading lines. Both tracks sounded good though, with no dropouts
or distortion.
Video:
The full frame video looks very good. The lines are tight and
the colors are solid. There was some aliasing, but it was fairly
minor. Like most of the recent anime that has been released, this
is a nice looking disc.
Extras:
The only extras included on this disc are a clean closing and the original
Japanese closing.
Final Thoughts:
As I predicted in my review of the first volume, there really isn't
much new ground that's examined in this set of shows. They hammer
on the same jokes over and over hoping that they'll eventually be funny,
but they aren't. I did crack a smile once or twice over these four
episodes, but that's not a good rate for a comedy. If you enjoyed
the first volume go ahead and pick this one up, but if you've never seen
the show be sure and rent a volume first.
Buy: