Last week’s Easter was extremely uneventful for me. This is clearly a thing as you get older: over any holiday, you just sit and wait for stuff to happen. Well…the anime season carries on nonetheless.
I loved last week’s Hitoribocchi, as it gave us a little more insight in Nako’s character. She gives off a delinquent aura (which she’s sick of), but is an extremely kind-hearted person inside. And being with Bocchi is helping her just as much as Bocchi is loving having Nako around. This week’s episode brings in our next character: Sotoka. Bocchi is someone who fascinates her, as she believes that because she talks little in class, she is the epitome of a ninja.
Even with the introduction of a third girl for Bocchi to become friendly with, I thought this week’s episode felt lacking compared to past ones. Sotoka’s airheadedness is obviously something that makes her what she is in Hitoribocchi, and compared to Nako’s aloofness and Aru’s poor luck, she can just be another contender for best girl in this show. Although in my eyes, she can’t win that. I think perhaps, when more develops in this show, and when these four have had more time to warm to each other, we’ll see some more comedy sketches that work. This whole ‘apprentice and master’ sketch got a little irritating, and I’m worried that it might be something that won’t die in this show.
Well, when it comes to We Never Learn, there are a lot of sketches that just won’t die, but since they’re all things we kind of expect in a school harem show like this, it’s something not as troublesome. This week’s episode revolves around three stories. The first being Fumino gaining weight after gorging on late-night study snacks, the second being Rizu discovering her chemistry rival is unhappy at the thought of her studying psychology, and the third being Uruka…umm…well that’s an awkward one, and a very atypical harem comedy sketch too.
Am I despairing for this show already, after 4 episodes? Well not quite, as all of these characters all have their own little charms that aren’t irritating. The show is ticking all the boxes for a typical school harem show, and nothing super-embarrassing has happened in this show yet, although the scene with Nariyuki being invited to touch Fumino’s stomach was a little awkward, and reminiscent of another awkward scene in Amagami SS, a 2010 school romance show that I found very entertaining.
Well, while I worry if Hitoribocchi is beginning to run on old jokes, and if We Never Learn is continuing to run on old harem jokes, Sarazanmai is offering something interesting.
This week effectively continues from where we left off last week, where we saw Enta kissing a sleeping Kazuki. The next day, Enta gets more worked up on how Kazuki has decided to quit soccer, the one thing that kept Enta going in life. This, in turn, reveals the sole reason why he is after the dishes: in the vain hope that Kazuki will stop his Sara costuming, return to soccer, and be a part of the ‘Golden Duo’ again.
This is rather a sweet episode, as even though he’s still young, naive and full of hormones, Enta appears to be quite rational. His reasons for the dishes are logical ones: he just things to go back to the way they were. He doesn’t seem to care if his love for Kazuki is unrequited either. We still haven’t really had an episode for Toi yet, although I anticipate that’ll be coming either next week or the week after.
But what I do want is that hoodie Kazuki wears this episode. And I don’t even care if red and orange don’t suit me.
And on to our out-of-season shows, and did I mention I’m kicking myself for missing both of these shows when they were originally released already?
Starting with Rascal Does Not Dream, and the critics may have already jumped on how there were so many similarities between this show and Haruhi Suzumiya (umm, there aren’t that many, you know…). Episode 4 begins a new arc though, and it revolves around a phenomenon called Laplace’s Demon (better described here on this Wikipedia page). Sakuta and Mai appear to be an item now, but a new girl is introduced here: Tomoe Koga, a first-year who initially labelled Sakuta as a lolicon. However, just as she is asked out by someone at school, Sakuta finds himself in a strange time loop.
I think that, in the way this episode ends, this arc might be just as good as the opening one featuring an invisible Mai. And also, if the other arcs that appear in this show (I have no idea what happens in the other episodes by the way…), then I think perhaps I might regain some faith in school anime shows. Rascal Does Not Dream has really peaked my interest, and I hope studios think to make more shows that have a similar style to this.
On to the other out-of-season show I’m doing, and I knew about the Chika rap scene in Kaguya-sama: Love is War – I mean, it was advertised so much both by Crunchyroll and social media, that I couldn’t avoid it.
However there is more to this episode than just Chika rapping. The student council host a lavish party for their French ‘sister’ academy, however because Miyuki is the only person who doesn’t speak French, the ‘sister’ academy students try to exploit this, until Kaguya steps in. I also think that this event, as well as an earlier moment involving Kaguya panicking over whether she should use her ancient flip-phone to call Miyuki or not, sort of marks a development in the relationship between these two…and shows that Kaguya-sama: Love is War is so much more than just a sketch comedy show.
It seems that this week I’ve been worrying if the shows I picked for this Spring season are all turning into atypical comedy sketch shows. Not that I have a problem with that genre; it’s just I usually hope that the shows I pick have much more ‘meat’ to them.
What do you think though? Did I choose shows that’ll end up turning into comedy sketch shows that are dime-a-dozen? Are the shows you’re watching this season disappointing you? Or are they entertaining you even more? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below…