Konnichiwa Anne – 23

FFor me, this was the best episode of this series since the move to Marysville. I really expected some emo cheese-fest in this episode, with Noah randomly getting sick and all, but as it turns out the creators had very clear ideas on what this episode was going to be about. Unlike what I thought at first, this episode really wasn’t about Noah. It’s sad and all that he got sick to the verge of death, but I really don’t care about this kid enough to really call his near-demise engaging. What instead caught my attention was how his accident completely jumbled up the Thomas Family: we suddenly got a complete different image of what everyone was like, and a couple of characters actually got some development out of it. I mean… when Noah collapsed, it was Anne who took him out of the hands of HIS OWN MOTHER, in order to take care of him, while Johanna was instead following Anne and assisting her. You’ve got to fail pretty badly as a mother if you let a nine-year-old make decisions for you that affect the life of your children. Horace thus far has been your typical child: always goofing off, however in this episode he slowly began to see that he was the oldest. Of course his attempts to show this failed pretty badly, but I think that he reached the point at which he’s going to start to mature, rather than goof around all of the time. Edward meanwhile kept staying with Harry: he’s starting to become a big brother to him, even though before he was just mimicking Horace. I suspect that from now on, Anne is going to have it much easier to try and take care of the house, simply because with this, the Horace/Edward combo has finally been broken. But the biggest focus of this episode was of course on Bert. In a way, this guy is actually developed better than Anne. While on one hand that’s a bit wrong in a series called “Konnichiwa ANNE”, but on the other hand it allows a really in-depth look at a type of character who hardly ever gets this much attention in today’s anime which is all about moe and bishies. We hardly ever get to see this much attention to a character who is as flawed as Bert, and in this episode you really could see the fruits of all the mistakes he made in the past: what the doctor’s mother said may have been very blunt, but it was how just about everyone in the village saw him as: a good for nothing drunkard who never works. Because of that, he never gets the chance of another job, keeps drinking and just continues the vicious cycle. The scenes around Noah recovering were a bit too cheesy, on the other hand. I’m surprised that even though this series really knows how little kids behave, they really only seemed to have focused on their every day behavior. Not what they’d be like during a crisis. But then again, that of course is pretty hard to study, since you can’t just sit by a sick kid and observe what his family is doing. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>