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If you looked at this manga and like me, read the plot at first as "Generic adventures of generic altruistic Protagonist and his generic lackeys, Love Interest and Best Friend!", let me warn you: That is false.

This manga is not revolutionary, nor is it insightful, or perfect, or even deep. It's just that it's everything you ever wanted except that. The art might not be unique, or the jokes might sometimes bounce off your ears, but the characters, stories, cleverness, and complexity of the whole web of connections more than makes up for it, with interest.

I think the greatest part of ... this manga is how episodic yet flowing the story is. You might have one character being the focus of one chapter, yet later they continue showing up more and more frequently until they are just as involved in the main plot as the members of the Sket-dan themselves. A good example of this is the baseball captain Takahashi. She first comes in as one of Himeko's friends, only showing up when the main trio is asking around for information and being the first one to question, but she soon becomes the champion of eating competitions and an important friend in Himeko's past. Momoka began as a simple delinquent who Himeko beat in the end but then begins to work her way to stardom throughout the series, completely changing the reader's view of her by the end. Genesis is the crappy game the Sket-dan first learned to play, but it turns out creator, Master Huang, had plenty of others, including board games, video games, party games, and card games, all with confusing rules just like the original sport. The author is never finished with a character or idea, new things are revealed about already recurring characters far after they are introduced. This method of plot-building made room to introduce at least 20 characters, each with their own development that you are aware of simultaneously overlapping on one another.

Every character, chapter, and event connects with at least two more, nothing stands alone without the support of the spiderweb of characters and events. Somehow Sket Dance manages this while still being a gag manga.

This leads me to the second best part of the manga: the perfect balance between comedy and everything else. Nothing is too exaggerated. You will laugh your face off, because that is what Sket Dance is for, but you will cry your heart out as well, because the author expertly weaves the drama in with the fooling around. The gags are in control but they coexist perfectly with the tears you might shed.

Now, I believe I mentioned earlier that this manga isn't perfect. It's true. There is nothing big wrong with it that any critic could see, but like every manga, it's not a one manga fits all. Some negative points about it might be how constant and uniform the gags are. They are thrown at you in groups of five every page, so often that you eventually stop caring to stop to laugh. This is made worse when all the jokes are the same kind of joke. Almost every gag in the series is formatted the exact same way: the Boke and Tsukkomi roles. These are funny, but so overused that the Boke gets more and more ridiculous to the point that it doesn't make sense, which may turn away some readers.

Overall, it's an outstanding manga and I hope you read it. Thank you for your time.

This series was, to be completely honest, my favorite anime ever. True, it doesn't develop most of the key points fundamental to a serious anime, but, as you may have noted, this is not a serious anime. This is one filled with the everyday random antics of wacky characters. I was laughing so hard that my family may have thought I was having trouble breathing. I kind of was.
There's not really much of a story, so I made my rating based on the concept rather than that, as story could translate to the same meaning as the synopsis of the fox spirit getting worried about ... the little girl and taking care of her. The general summary of it is something part "awww" and part "who even has the kind of creative mind to come up with something as randomly genius but still logical in a crazy way as this?" So I think it's pretty imaginative.

The art and sound are average, nothing exceptional, but it was just fine and it fit. Often Kohina is drawn in a robot/doll-like fashion, but that matches her personality very well and the realistic version of her is used appropriately at the few emotional moments that call for it. The opening theme is very cute and catchy but the background music isn't something I would like to listen to in any case except for in the show. It fits there and adds to the mood but on it's own is mediocre.

The characters are a little flat, with the exception of Kokkuri-san himself, their backgrounds either sounded a bit interesting but hardly went into any detail at all (as in the case of Inugami and the Tanuki) or were hardly asked about and never answered or explained (such as why Kohina lives alone or what her parents did) and only Kohina and Kokkuri-san experienced any character developement, but all the characters had their own goal or set of desires and contributed to the humor trying to achieve them.

Now, the main reason I loved this show was, undoubtedly, the comedy, as it IS the main feature. Every scene had me laughing like a maniac, as stated previously, and all of the crazy situations the characters got into were funny by themselves, adding on the taken opportunities to pack on additional humor, every time I was almost over Laughing, a new joke comes hurtling towards me again and hits me in the funny bone before I have a chance to recover.

Overall, great fun to watch, hardly any seriousness at all, but enough emotional moments to get you worried about the characters and keep going to the end.