One of the front-running candidates for the third spot of my Favourite Anime listing (behind Card Captor Sakura and Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) is Hidamari Sketch, and the main reason it hasn't been shunted into the position yet is because I'm not entirely sure why. This isn't exactly a reason in itself to deny greatness, but I felt that I needed to know if it was the show itself which I liked, or just the general style such shows in the genre lend themselves to.

I've not seen Sketchbook yet, and other series involving art students don't come to mind as yet, so I don't know if the general concept of Slice Of Life involving Art naturally leads to a more Artistic sort of anime style. Of course, I know just about nothing about True Art, so I can't tell if this is actually Artistic, or merely pretentious. Whichever it is, at least it's entertaining, which is far more important to me than Art.

And of course, it is difficult to separate the Art of an anime about art students from the Art of SHAFT, when watching Hidamari Sketch. Maybe there is no such separation, and the two build on each other like cheese on pizza.

Geijustuka Art Design Class, or GA for short (regardless of any possible confusion with similarly-initialed series), is not quite up to HidaSketch standards in my pantheon of Favourite Anime. I place the source of the difference squarely on the soundtrack: I love the HidaSketch soundtrack to bits, while GA has some good tracks, but the majority appear to be there merely to give some texture to the background, and could have been replaced with a dial tone. On the upside, I like the opening theme ("Osaki ni sil vous plait", possibly translated from both Japanese and French as "Go ahead first, if you please"), and the ending theme ("Colouring palettes", Tomokane/Miyuki Sawashiro version) is very catchy.

Speaking of voice actors, GA gets points for being very surprising: all the names are familiar, but the voices are different. Haruka Tomatsu (Shiho Sannomiya in Zettai Karen Children, off the top of my head) sounds so much like Mamiko Noto (one million million light-and-airy-voice characters, like Nodoka Miyazaki in Negima, Aoi Futaba in Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel, Kotomi Ichinose in Clannad… so on and so forth) that I had to double-check the credits. Miyuki Sawashiro is no longer Puchiko from Di Gi Charat, but a loud hyperactive tomboy character. And Yui Horie abandons her genki-cheerful voice for a lower oneesan role in this one.

Since I've only had time to watch the first episode (the second is waiting for another unbroken chunk of an hour or so to watch and jot down my impressions thereof), I'm obviously not going to make a judgement one way or another yet. Maybe the really awesome parts of the soundtrack will turn up in later episodes, or maybe even a later season.

Until then, I suspect I'll be subconsciously and constantly pushing my spectacles up in sympathy with Kisaragi.