Special Broken... New Year

Special Broken... New Year (壊れてしまった特別な…正月 Kowarete shimatta tokubetsu-na... shōgatsu) is the 39th episode of the Sket Dance anime.

Summary
After Switch fixes Yamanobe's Fancy Yunpyouter, Yamanobe has the Sket Dan crew play a game called Special Broken Mariko which is the parody of Super Mario Brothers. (See Special Mariko Broken page) Later, the Sket club and the rest of the cast celebrate the New Year with a compilation of clips from the anime.

Plot
The SKET Dan, Roman, Shinzo, and Reiko welcome the viewers, Happy New Year. Chuuma complains, but Hime sends him back to do his job. He asks Roman about her thoughts on Sket Dance. Roman replies that both Sket Dance and the manga creator, Kenta Shinohara, are Kouhyou (a pun that means both well received and criticized. Please see Points of Interest). Everyone drop dead at her pun. After a pan hits everyone, Roman and SKET Dan cue for the opening. With the opening done, Shinzo, Reiko, and Roman eat together and talk about autumn in their own words. In the SKET Dan clubroom, Hime cries and vows to beat Bossun after losing to him in a video game while Switch fixes a console at the request of Yamanobe. Bossun and Hime compliment Switch by calling names, but Bossun's nickname is calling Switch a pervert. Switch explains that Yamanobe got it from Master Wong. Yamanobe appears and asks Switch about the status. Switch explains to him that the console has poor cooling systems and that in only four hours, it will overheat.

When Bossun and Hime point out that the game looks fishy, Yamanobe's answers further conclude the game is a ripoff of real games. He goes on about how Yunpyou, the name of the console, is based on the martial artist who was trained by Master Wong. Hime and Bossun refuses to believe Yamanobe's story as it has some inconsistencies. Switch asks Yamanobe if he brought the game, and Yamanobe asks them to help him beat the game, so he can see the ending. The game is called Broken Special Mariko which is a scrolling action game. Yamanobe states the game is about Mariko who is in a romantic love affair with her boss. Now, they finally give the game a try. Before they could do that, Yamanobe blows on the cartridge. When the game title screen comes on, Bossun and Hime point out that the game is a total ripoff with the name, Wotendo, which could be Master Wong's doing. Yamanobe denies all accusations with excuses. Bossun is the first one to play, and the game's music sounds like Super Mario Bros as the main character dies upon landing. Yamanobe tells him to flap the arms to avoid death by pointing to the G button among the many buttons on the controller. He even points out that the controller's direction pad has no down button, so it's actually a tetromino.

During the game play, Yamanobe explains about the different types of "eringi" which are colored mushrooms (similar to Super Mario Bros). It's Hime's turn to play. She encounters a Eringi monster in an RPG like game, and she struggles to go through the command list because there's too many useless commands and the no down button is problematic. It's up to Switch to beat the game. Along the way, Bossun questions how Switch enters a pipe. Yamanobe replies with a complicated sequence of buttons, S+J+up+right. In the underground, Switch meets a moe character, Moeko, who sells sweets. When Switch fusses with the controller, Yamanobe points to the small hole on the controller which the uirou comes bursting out. He tells them to eat it, but Switch punches buttons to keep the thing back inside. Finally, they get to the last fight in the game, and the boss is the manager Kaimei. Bossun finds the answer by using the talk command to Luigiana. The two girls share two 1cup, and the two work together to beat the manager with Unison Attack. Before the last boss dies, he shouts that he loves Mariko. As everyone cheer for victory, Hime reminds Switch about how they played for 4 hours straight. The console overheats as it explodes and breaks into pieces, leaving the cartridge on fire.
 * Red Eringi = promotes Mariko
 * Blue Eringi = career up
 * Green Eringi = 1cup which makes Mariko drunk
 * Yellow Eringi = makes Mariko get more dizzy
 * Pink Eringi = Give Up or Mariko lose a live

After the Credits
Sket Dan and Roman play a board game for the New Year that brings montages of Sket Dance episodes such as Remi Misora's debut, Shinba's cooking show, and Bakuman collaboration. Shinzo appears, and he gets a montage of him in the episode with other scenes from Glassman and Roman's craptastic manga.

Fake scenes appear when Reiko appears in Hime's origin story and during the burning of Remi's show's mascots. The show ends with a tier doll set (Hinamatsuri) and Sket Dan bidding everyone, Happy New Year.

Gallery
Check out the episode's image gallery!

Cast & Credits

 * Hiroyuki Yoshino: Yūsuke Fujisaki (Bossun)
 * Ryōko Shiraishi: Hime Onizuka (Himeko)
 * Tomokazu Sugita: Kazuyoshi Usui (Switch)
 * Nobuyuki Hiyama: Kunio Yamanobe
 * Jōji Nakata: Tetsuji Chūma
 * Kenta Miyake: Shinzō Takemitsu
 * Fumiko Orikasa: Reiko Yūki
 * Ai Kayano: Roman Saotome
 * Megumi Kojima: Mariko
 * Yuuko Gotou: Louisiana
 * Norio Wakamoto: Director-General Kamei

Manga and Anime Differences

 * There aren't any new year scenes in the manga version.
 * In the manga:
 * The character in the fighting game which Bossun's use is Katsuko and Himeko's is Manshu. But, neither of them is named in the anime.
 * Kunio's television in flashback scene is not a HD LCD TV.
 * There aren't Switch's explanation about the rusting thing and "how to use down key function" from Kunio. And also there isn't the "moe" character (Moeko) either.
 * The controller doesn't built-in-uirou.
 * Mariko and Louisiana don't eat the drink the "1cup"s to do the union attack.