She’s not wearing any!

80% is a pretty good success rate for a sketch comedy, and that’s about what Mitsudomoe hit this week for me. I’ll take that if it keeps up every week – as for this episode only the “Emergency Drill” sketch didn’t cut it. Kuriyama-sensei is definitely the least funny cast member for me, and any sketch she’s heavily involved in tends to be less hilarious than the rest.

The theme for this week – and there’s pretty much always a theme – is underwear. Everyone in this show is trapped inside their own cage, a prisoner of some elemental part of themselves that they can’t shake no matter what. For Shin-chan it’s getting caught in pervy situations that further diminish his good boy reputation. If he were as smart as he’s supposed to be I think he’d just avoid Futaba altogether since she’s the source of most of his problems – but then, Shin-chan definitely likes Futaba. He did pick her panties out of the whole drawer full, after all. There’s always a moment that makes me LOL and rewind with this series and today it was when Futaba pulled up Hitoha’s skirt to find nothing underneath. But the whole sketch was a winner – all that effort to draw a porno for Chiba, and he doesn’t even like it…

I don’t particularly care for you…

The aforementioned emergency drill sketch didn’t do much for me, laugh-wise – it was, like most of the second ep of the first season, more crude than clever. But things smartly returned to form with the next offering, granting the always welcome chance to watch Soujirou squirm and be chased like a bad “Benny Hill” skit. The whole notion of a three-legged race featuring Soujirou and Youngest-san has disaster written all over it, but even I didn’t see the “end” of this one coming. Chiba gets a turn in the spotlight next, eager to try out his new signature move, a bra-removal technique. But alas, the sixth grade is full of flat-chested and bra-less girls, and things go rather badly when he ends up reverting to a skirt-lifting on Sugisaki and Yuki. Poor Chiba’s sex life may have ended before it began. Finally, it’s the whole Marui clan on center-stage as we take another trip down memory lane to when Soujirou was a hottie of Shin-chan proportions, and we get to see than Mitsuba’s vanity is bigger than her pride (but not, perhaps, her stomach). The whole scene with the girls visiting the home and ogling Soujirou’s old picture was a classic, but by far my favorite part was watching Hitoha sit quietly by bemusedly watching things get more and more bizarre, and impending humiliation for Mitsuba get more and more certain. Her simple line of dialogue at the end deflated Sourjirou with exquisite finality.

I can definitely see why this series isn’t for everyone. Frankly, there are times when I actually feel guilty for laughing as hard as I do. That doesn’t make me laugh any less though…