This was a solid episode from Sakura Quest. This week is the first of the two-parter (probably) about the Queen and her team making a special dish for Manoyama town that could attract tourists. Now I see the formula the show’s currently employing: the first three episodes focus on Yoshino and her coming to term with the rural village, and gathering the main cast. Episode 4 and 5 concentrate on woodcarving industry and fleshing out Sanae, the last two episodes they shift the focus to assisting movie crew and give a necessarily development to Maki. This new episode will be all about cooking, taste testing and developing the core member that I’m most worried about: Shiori. Turn out both the food-making part and the Shiori part were all excellent. At the end of this episode, Sakura Quest merges those two storylines together as Shiori takes charge as the leader of that food project, with some clearly identified obstacles to overcome. So why do I have to namelist all the previous episodes, you ask? Well, knowing its patterns help me to suspense my disbelief so I can enjoy the ride better. As of now, this format doesn’t bother me too much anymore. While it’s sitcom-y, meaning after the arc is done we gonna reset back to status quo for another new story, which kind of defeat the development of previous arc; giving the show different scenarios to work with make that world feels rich, like every corner of the town Manoyama has lives on its own. For example, the lake the girls fishing (by bare hands) or the farm at the beginning of this episode feel entirely vivid and lifelike, which of course add to the charms of this little town.
So the Board of Tourism comes up with new strategy to attract more tourists: making a home-made signature dish. I know this plan hits my own sweet spot more than anything but the idea of making local food is a sound idea for me. One of the issue of this plan though, is that none of the main casts, save Shiori, have any idea about cooking. I love the way they come up with their own “creations”, which reflect so well with their respective personalities: Sanae with her love for fast-food ramen- chicken wings hybrid, Maki’s quantity-over-quality Mega Tempura Sandwich, Yoshino with all mixed ingredients that already sound like a bad idea, and Ririko with her green “witch” soup (the bug she brought earlier squeezed out green cream as well. Could it be…). I also love her grandma super calm reaction after tasting that soup (a big disaster) and her even calmer suggestion to eat takeaway food. It also helps that when the girls being themselves without any development, they still bounce off each other very well. Ririko’s snarky comments hit a lot of target here, so does Maki and Sanae teasing (and then team up) to each other. Their absurd outfits at the beginning is a feat to watch as well, especially Maki and her Bruce Lee’s uniform with David Carradine’s famous hat.
Back to the main plot, only Shiori has any idea of making “eatable” food, but also like her personality, her foods taste great, yet so plain that fail to impress anyone. In addition, only Shiori who came to know and appreciate the local ingredients, which makes sense when you want to promote a local food. The rest of the group want to appoint her as the head of the cooking campaign, but she hesitates with that idea since it comes so much of a burden to her. Sakura Quest pretty much answers my concerns regarding developing Shiori character, as this episode challenges her supporting, never-want-to-be-in-spotlight personality and makes it her ultimate catalyst to overcome. Then Sakura Quest raises the stake even further by providing the conflict between the Tourism Board and the Merchant Board. Yoshino forgets to inform the Merchant Board about their food day, which happens to overlap with the Merchant’s Summer Festival. Later, when all members from Tourism Board come over to apologize, Grandma Oribe also points out, quite rightly, that Kadota has been selling out. While she hated his Chupakabura manju, she can deal with it because he still used the local products, but the “deluxe version” is created from some other company, thus defeat its very purpose of promoting local foods. Kadota clearly cares about gaining more tourists for the town, but he ultimately uses more aggressive methods, which caused a stir with the local people. This conflict is well thought-out so I’m interested to see what Shiori will come up with next week.
The episode also spends a huge amount of its time for Shiori’s own family and introduces two new characters, Shiori’s older sister Sayuri and the bear chef Kumano and the two have some romantic tension with each other. The parents and grandparents of her are all adorable people and have a very warm chemistry together. The way the grandparents introduces non-subtlety their single granddaughters to any young man they like as “We have two here. You can pick one” is sooo my grandparent way of obvious hook-up lines that it’s endearing and scary at the same time. Later on, when Shiori’s dad take her for a little walk, his wisdom “Everyone’s life changes eventually” again hit hard here. Shiori is the type of person who doesn’t want anything to change, because she’s happy with everything right now. But things won’t stay the same as time progresses, so the lesson here she needs to learn is that changes aren’t that scary and they eventually come as she moves on to the next stage of her life. Even without the progress of the tourism plan and the core cast’s developments (in which this episode happens to excel in both departments), random wisdom like this, heart-warming and meaningful that cut right through my heart, is a healthy dose of insight that I clearly need right now.
