Category: Hana-Saku Iroha

So, this was a silly episode. Still, I enjoyed it. Considering what this series is doing at the moment (building up for its second half), this was an episode well spent.

My big problem with the previous episodes was not that they suddenly turned into slice of life. Instead, I got the impression that they just didn’t have any inspiration to fill their time. The drama was forced, the new characters, and the scenarios and settings that were used to spice up these episodes actually just backfired. The soldiers in this episode was as flat as a pancake, but for the first time in ages I got the feeling that the characters were genuine again.

By far the most annoying part about this series is the innuendo, which really feels out of place. What have the creators already done to Ohana at this point? Tied her up? Put her in a china dress? Having middle aged guys peep on her? This is the kind of fanservice that I dislike: it’s not about how explicit it is or not, but it’s just consistently out of place and consistently breaks down the mood.

The most important thing though, is that this episode showed a nicely different side to many of the characters: beyond the silliness it actually did a great job in fleshing out the cast without making them go out of character. It’s not just Tomoe: the rest of the cast also got these tiny scenes that revealed more about their characters, and this time the episode actually made good use of it. This show seemed to have struggled a lot with keeping its characters enjoyable and interesting to watch, and this episode was well spent, despite the very stereotypical guest characters.
Rating: * (Good)

So, this show is really seems to be going with the “first half random stories, second half plot”-format. This episode was once again a standalone story. With this though, I also realized what I’ve been missing through the past four episodes:

There are two keys to a great first half for such a format: it needs to have strong individual stories and it needs to use those stories to build upon the main setting and characters. This series has the latter covered: the second half of this show has a ton of potential considering the amount of build up that the past number of episodes have been putting into it. That’s fine. It’s just that I don’t really find the stories of the individual episodes that interesting.

So yeah, in this episode the characters got to dress up in fetish outfits: first there were the china dresses and then there were the maid-ish outfits. The whole story around trying to innovate the bathhouse wasn’t really interesting because of how it just limited itself to random outfit changes. It never bothered to look at the big picture. It’s obviously building up to something, but this episode in itself didn’t really stand out. It was too mundane.

Still, we got a few hints to grandmother’s past and uncle’s background. This episode did serve its job of delivering variety and fleshing out the characters. The only thing I didn’t like about that part was that we now indeed get confirmed that Tohru has a crush on Ohana. Love Triangles are really dangerous: they very easily can take over the entire series if the creators aren’t careful. Please, let them be careful.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Misunderstandings in anime are annoying. Especially when they can be solved by just… talking to each other. Unfortunately this episode didn’t escape that. What’s worse, is that the creators tried to hide the fact that Tohru was just filling in for a day, yet it was obvious from the start that nothing was going on. Seeing this only fueled up by the novellist, who was the most annoying character of this series anyway, made things even worse.

At least this episode fleshed out Minko and Ohana. This arc established Minko’s character as a hard-working yet lovestruck girl, and it developed the friction between her and Ohana better, and we also have a good basis for a romance as well. Ohana also finally sent a message to her boyfriend as well, so it’s not like this episode was wasted.

What I want to see right now is variety: instead of making the next episode focus on romance yet again, make it focus on something completely different again. The bets example of this was the transition between episodes 2 and 3.
Rating: * (Good)

This remains annoying: the transfer student introduces him or herself to a classroom and the first thing that every single guy does is annoyingly talk about the cutest girl in school who of course happens to be one of the important characters. It has really gotten old ages ago, and yet anime just keeps pulling it. I mean, I have nothing against there being the cutest girl in school and all, but whenever she’s around, every single guy in school just gets reduced to this annoying fanboy who does nothing other than secretly stalk admire her. Nothing else! It’s a good thing that this show doesn’t have a male lead because that would really have been terrible (you know, the main character being the only one oblivious to her charms and all…).

In any case, this episode showed the introduction of the main character to the local school, so it wasn’t as good as the first two episodes because it dealt with a lot of introductions and stuff that unfortunately appears in a lot of other series. In terms of setting up things, it did its job well though. we’ve got a nice romance around Minko, Ohana’s feelings about her “boyfriend” get developed a bit and Nako also got a bit of her past revealed. It’s definitely not a wasted episode.

The most important thing though: after the previous episode, my biggest fear was that this show would abandon the first two episodes and continue on with these silly stories onward. Thankfully that didn’t turn out to be the case. In that case it was good for a bit of variety.
Rating: * (Good)

True Tears was a show that just kept you guessing. Whenever something major happened, you never were sure whether things were what they seemed. In Hana-Saku Iroha however, things are exactly what they seem. I know that Mari Okada wrote both of them, but the two shows had completely different directors, and yeah, that really showed in this episode. Talk about something completely different.

“Out of place” is the best way to describe this episode. To think that the creators would actually take the porn novelist seriously. The most surreal part was where Ohana started reading some of his work and started relating to a silly porn script (it’s good to see a girl to not act so stereotypically embarrassed like with a ton of other anime, but going too far into the other direction also leads to questionable acting…), but that suicide attempt of that novelist also was just plain weird.

Whether this episode was good or bad depends pretty much on the rest of this series. This is a show of 26 episodes and with the right amount of development this could be a neat way to flesh out the characters and show something new of them. It’s definitely good that this show tries to be different, but at the moment though, it felt like the majority of the cast was just acting out of character in this episode.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Hana-Saku Iroha: the series with the best drama of the season. I seriously did not expect this show to already be this good this soon, and Noitamina’s Anohana is going to have some really stiff competition here. What’s best is that finally, PA Works are moving into 26 episoded series.

The strength of this series is that it has a huge cast of characters who all somehow clash with each other, and it plays off of this really well. Ohana is a great lead character whose personality is perfect for this series, but the other main characters are all great to watch. Her strict grandmother and the shy waitress in particular were great, and I also loved the bickering between her and the cook assistant who keeps telling her to die..

What’s interesting is that some of the people have this habit of just walking away when they run into a situation they don’t like. Ohana actually made good use of that at the end of this episode with a particularly wonderful climax and I really hope that this show can keep this up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)