Contains Minor Spoilers
Story
The story of Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto Is about a near perfect high school student, Sakamoto, and his schoolmates and classmates. The episodes are structured like western animated series where episodes are divided into two, sometimes three, segments where each segment contains its own story. I liked the idea of the story of a cool boy scout like character that is popular but that also butts heads with the people he interacts with a school setting. The story starts off pretty strong but struggles to maintain momentum as the show progresses. At the start, it is fun to see how the characters who dislike Sakamoto try to make him slip up and lose his cool in front of his class, yet Sakamoto manages to maintain his cool and suave demeanour and turns his adversaries’ plans on its head.
However, the story veers off with this set up because you clearly cannot show a characters trying to maintain his cool while his classmates try to make him slip up for 12 episodes. However, thinking back, I would have rather have preferred that to a lot of what followed. Suffice to say, there is very little story in show. Without spoiling anything, one segment of an episode literally just revolves around Sakamoto walking. I’m not over exaggerating when I say that in one episode, the story is basically Sakamoto walking from Point A to Point B.
You can watch the first two episodes of the series and then the final two and you would not miss anything important with everything in between feeling like filler. I have no problem with the structure of the show because there are animated titles that have 10 minute episodic segments where each segment has a beginning, middle and an end. And even if these shows do not have strong stories they make up for it with interesting and funny characters and good jokes and funny comedy. Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto rarely does and barely has any of these things.
Characters
The show’s setup has you believe that the world, and more specifically the school, wherein the story is set, is inhabited by really goofy, wacky and zany characters almost akin to the anime Cromartie High but not to such a large extent. There were some standouts like Kubota Shigemi and Sera Yuuya, however most of the cast is pretty uninteresting and boring. The novelty of seeing Sakamoto being perfect and cool wears off quickly because you know that he won’t slip up and that nothing bad will happen to him. There is no real character development for him or for most of the characters in the series.
Art
It is always difficult for me to review the art of an anime title when the animation looks just like so many other title. The art and animation was okay however later all of the characters started to look the same, especially the girls. It was just fine.
Sound
There is one recurring gag that made me laugh or at least chuckle and it was an extremely melodramatic song from a favourite television show of one of the characters. This was used to milk dramatic and over the top moments for laughs and in these scenes and moments, it works really well and never got tiresome. The rest of the music was fine as was the voice work but that’s about it. Not much else to say.
Enjoyment
Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto started really well and I was curious to see where the story would go, however it loses steam very quickly and some of the middle episodes were an absolute chore and grind to watch. Some of the characters I enjoyed and there are some clever ideas and gags spread throughout the show. After a year of not watching a single anime however, I was disappointed with Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto. If you’re looking for a stupid anime to watch just to kill some time, give this a try. But if all you want to do is kill time, there are probably much better titles out there that you could rather watch.
6/10
