I was half-expecting a panda to show up there at the end.

A pretty self-explanatory double-episode OVA from Tonari no Seki-kun, a series which is always a cleansing experience when the excess of formula and derivative nonsense on the anime schedule have taken their toll on the soul.  This one isn’t as substantial as the “School Camp” OVA, which both had more big laughs and allowed the series to toy with a more well-developed plot than in any other single episode.  This is is just fun – Seki-kun being Seki-kun, and Yokoi being Yokoi.

That, of course, means Seki getting into the elaborately sadistic schoolboy nonsense he’s unparalleled at inventing and Yokoi getting way too involved in it.  That’s the hook, of course – all she has to do is walk away (or in a normal classroom episode, look away) but she can’t – Seki-kun is her sun, and Yokoi-chan has no welder’s goggles.

Seki-kun is ingenious enough to make something out of nothing, but of course he really shines when he can make something out of something – and snow is a fertile canvas on which his imagination can paint.  His masterwork this time is pretty straightforward – an adorable snow bunny which he maroons at the center of the tiny school pond, frozen over after an overnight snowfall, so that he can slowly crack the ice watch it plunge.  Yokoi of course will have none of that, and we see she and Seki-kun each slip into ninja mode as she tries to disrupt his plans anonymously and he rains white death on her in a rain of snowballs.

Seki is better at the whole ninja thing of course, and there’s no winning for Yokoi in a story like this one – she eventually does get the rabbit to safety behind the school shed before drawing Seki away, but he then sculpts snow penguins on his desk and pulls out a shirokuma to demonstrate the food chain (polar bears and penguins don’t go together in real life, of course, but that’s never stopped manga before).  As always, Yokoi is hoist by her own petard – and we return to a much more natural order after a brief reversal of fortune at the close of the last OVA.

I’m assuming there will be more OVAs to come, but I’m never sure with this series – I don’t see any more officially listed but I suspected the aim was to eventually get to the 26 episodes originally scheduled (even if you count the earlier OVA from January we’d still be short), and the narrator’s closing comments certainly suggest more to come.  I certainly hope so – this series scratches an itch no other show can scratch.