"It's not in our vocabulary."
In case anyone hasn't noticed in my other 3 reviews of this series, I'm a big fan of Hidamari Sketch and its author, Ume Aoki (who also became character designer for the Madoka Magica series). Season 4, "Honeycomb", takes everything that was great and special about Hidamari and polishes it to near-perfection.
It's around this time frame that Shaft began to step up its animation delivery game. While there have been filler frames in a later production (Sasami-san@Ganbaranai a year later), as far as I can tell there haven't been any in Honeycomb. Looking for filler frames in place of complex animation has been something of an Easter egg hunt for Shaft fans. As a consequence, the opening animation, which was incomplete in season 3 and Negima!?, is released complete. It's fantastic, but if memory serves, it's almost the same for the entire season, so it's not quite as fun as season 3. I say "almost", because in the shots before the title frame, there are different scenes from the manga featuring each of the 3 pairs of girls.
After using a complicated-looking planetarium for the film leader gag in season 3, Honeycomb opted for a simpler, cuter "honeycomb" motif featuring SD faces of the 6 girls. Again, this is adorable, and yet the previous ideas (seasonal flowers, constellations) were a little more "fun" in my opinion. This isn't a bad decision, though-- sometimes the more "fun" decisions means that the production as a whole don't get all the shots done on time, and it's this consistent production process that probably got the attention of NHK/Aniplex/etc. when they were looking for a studio to animate March Comes in Like a Lion.
While it's still mostly an episodic sitcom, there are a couple of story threads that wind their way through the production: Yuno's growth as an artist (well, all right, that's always been there, but we start to see it come to fruition, and Yuno spends less time fretting about her skills), and Sae/Hiro's final year, which culminates in the 2-episode OVA that was released a year later. It's also this season where we begin to see development of recurring minor characters like Yoshinoya and Natsume, drawing them further into the world of the six girls.
Part of the magic in the Hidamari series is just how close-to-home the comedy is. In one scene Nazuna is writing New Year's greeting cards while trying to hold a conversation, and accidentally writes down what she's saying. It's hilarious, you can totally see someone (e.g. yourself) doing it, and you can totally picture Ume-sensei laughing about it with her friends.
The soundtrack is essentially the same across all four seasons, ranging from a simple ditty on a recorder/violin, to a simple tune on the piano, to (in later seasons) folksy number with a few scat-singers. Those are the only 3 tracks that I can remember at the moment, but they are a good fit for the iyashi series. I'm pretty sure there was a new track written for the haunted house scene.
Great series always leave me wanting more, and while there's still some material left in the manga (how I wish that Matsuri was animated), there hasn't been any word on a fifth television series (or if they've denied further production, I haven't heard). I've long felt that the series proper would end when Yuno graduates and leaves her apartment, but sadly, like Kakifly's K-On!, it looks like the final pieces of the story will remain in manga form.
