Contrary to what I predicted last week, turns out there is a continuation to the “cliff-hanger” last week, and more importantly, it serves as a catalyst for Hinamatsuri this week’s first half. This is a second week in a row that the show involves little-to-no crazy superpower hijinks, which I’m not sure if it works for the show’s benefits. I always consider these ridiculous power Hina and Ainzu possess one of Hinamatsuri’s distinctive personality, thus without those the show feels more like your typical odd-couple slice of life comedy show. I’m quite glad that Hina and Nitta pair gets a main focus in this first half. Hina gets kicked out of the house by Nitta, it’s a kind of natural progression considering how much of a sloth and mindlessness Hina is. Too useless that she immediately spends her amount of money on food, then stays with Anzu but does nothing but eats food and reads manga. Anzu delivers what might be one of the best line of anime this season: “That girl’s not even fit to be homeless”. She learns the rope of surviving though, when she teams up with the street band and performs “tricks”. The band becomes extremely popular much to Nitta’s surprise.
As for Nitta part, unexpectedly receives harsh reaction from his group through his bad choice of phrasing (I love that comedy bit where some strangers stand up against him the most), even being banned from Utako’s bar until he makes up with Hina in one of the episode’s most hilarious sequence where Utako throws salt right after he left – an act of cleansing all the evil’s spirits. I particular love the way Hinamatsuri animates Utako clumsy actions – he finds himself worrying about her despite claiming that he doesn’t care about her well-being one bit. This part is supposed to be a break so that both Nitta and Hina can see the importance of the other in their lives, but I’ll be honest to say that it doesn’t grab me much because it has been done to death before. In the end though, what worries me the most is the way after going through many hardships of being homeless, Hina doesn’t change much except that now she knows for sure that wants to be with Nitta. In terms of character’s development, this blue-hair girl is still pretty much a brat. Consider how her two friends grow right before our eyes through their dire situations, I’m a bit concerned that if Hina doesn’t grow soon she might be the least interesting character out of this pack.
Speaking of Hina’s two friends, the second half spends on Anzu and my girl Hitomi encounter for the first time. What I like the most about them is how despite being very contrasted in terms of personality (one timid, one self-centred, ends up at vastly different outcomes (one has money more than she could imagine, the other only makes few bucks a day), in an essence they have been going through the same thing: that they learn something out of their usual personality and they come to do their jobs with pride. There’s a hint of pride in Anzu’s statement of being homeless, there’s a great montage about Hitomi not only being good at bartender, but also excels on customer’s service – provides the kind of atmosphere that Nitta’s boss, her own homeroom teacher and even Utako herself can be their honest self and not worry about their real life. At heart that’s exactly what Hitomi’s doing here. Hitomi even manages to half-blackmail one staff so that Anzu can have those bags of cans, a glaring example of how she adapts real fast. Anzu goes a long way too, bringing her new “friend” home and offering her install-noodle as a repayment, something she learns by heart through her homeless gang. We shall see how they grow as friends but I suspect that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I loved this episode, I laughed really hard when Hitomi felt guilty to even eat the noodles Anzu provided. You could understand her discomfort.
Yeah, I agree. That whole segment underlines her discomfort well. From “Who is Yassan” to “things get heavy” to yeah that cup of noodle, even later when they playing tag.
My favorite moment of this episode is when some random dudes from a bar are the most vocal ones to Nitta and he just keeps thinking: “Who the hell are you?”
You know, I think reviewing this series will be hard, especially if it was me. I just find myself enjoying myself every episode so far. And even though there are kids with superpowers, they somehow seem believable as characters.
I think this kind of comedy is not common in anime. The only one I can compare this to is Gintama (minus the vulgarity), which I also like.
As far as episodic review goes, I still find Hinamatsuri not that hard to cover, since it has many good moments to brag on. Slice-of-slice shows are the hardest, given there isn’t much going on in terms of plot (and somehow, I tend to cover them).
Gintama would be an appropriate comparision, as it does remind me bits of Gintama at times.