Ah, I knew it. It was all too good to be true. Despite that though, this episode still surprised me with the direction it took. The whole movie subplot was wrapped up really subtle. In fact, we don’t even fully know the repercussions yet. For this episode, life continued as usual for nearly the entire cast, except for Ohana’s uncle and grandmother.
That uncle who received a ton of depth, by the way. In a way, it’s a shame that the promotional material just contains the cute girls of the series. He shows that the males have just as much right to be there. What this episode did to Ohana’s uncle was excellent: it completed establishing what kind of character he is, and developed him further by introducing romance. This is the kind of change that I was talking about during the last episode.
Now, I also want to see those repercussions. Again, that could very well be the change that I was hoping for. This episode gave away enough hints that something big is going to happen. The most logical thing would be for people to be laid off in order to compensate for the losses that were made, and you can really get some good drama out of that when played right.
Now that Ohana’s uncle received such good development, I can’t help but wonder: what about Nako and Tomoe? These two feel a bit out of it, compared to the rest of the cast. Nako at the moment is just “the best friend”. She always stands in Ohana’s shadow and never really gets to do something herself. Tomoe suffers the same fate: she’s been absent from pretty much all of the parts where this series really hit its stride and showed off how good it was. At the moment there’s not much more to her character than “Ohana’s boss”.
Rating: ** (Excellent)