It’s not easy being a hardworking panda.

What They Say:
Full Time Panda is away for a week, so Panda has to work his shifts. He gets some encouragement from a fan name Rin Rin, who he searches for every day. Mr. Polar Bear wants to serve a special menu and when word gets around it will be Parfaits, everyone has a suggestion.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series continues, the charms haven’t diminished overall and it’s gotten a bit more interesting in seeing the situations that the cast gets involved with. The whole driving thing in the previous episode was a little surreal, especially when they hit up a fast food restaurant. But that kind of nature is one of the appeals of the series in that you don’t know how it’s going to hew with things. This episode starts off with some real fun, at least for the viewer as the “Full Time” Panda is taking some vacation time and that means our Panda has to step up and do some extra work shifts at the zoo. And that’s just an unusual concept in and of itself.

It’s not easy being a panda in a zoo, especially since our Panda is such a lazy one that he doesn’t like having to do additional work of appearing in front of the visitors. It’s something that the staff gets on him about as well since he’s not really giving them the service that they need. What helps him along the way though is that he gets a bit of an admirer of sorts, someone that encourages him in what he does. He becomes kind of enamored of the woman/girl named Rin Rin, whom he has never seen, and starts to view every female as the potential Rin Rin. While he was kind of unmotivated before, he’s all intent on doing his best now in hopes of showing Rin Rin what a great job he’s doing. And he definitely delights the audience. Of course, there’s a bit of a quirk about the whole thing that makes you grin when Panda finds out the truth, oblivious as he is for so long.

While the first half is all about Panda, the second half works with a lot more of the animals as it goes back to the cafe itself. The fun with Polar Bear is pretty good as he decides to add parfaits to the menu as a specialty item to try and draw in a bit more of a crowd and add something for the regulars. Polar Bear has a lot of good scenes here as he works the whole angle, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but others get involved with their own suggestions. It’s similar to how many of them had their own idea on how to change the cafe before, but we get some fun suggestions from each of the different types of animals about what kind of parfaits they’d want, which gets kind of weird at times. Even Llama goes into a lot of detail about his grass parfait…

In Summary:
Polar Bear Cafe continues to be the kind of show that just makes me smile throughout. It’s not critical thinking or anything, but it hits some really cute and fun moments along the way that just make you grin at the surreal nature of certain parts of it. The whole parfait thing here is great, especially as they get to the reveal at the end of the different types and then eat them. The poor animals! And parfaits! The first half is fun as well as we see Panda really struggling with holding down the whole panda exhibit for awhile and then finding his groove thanks to some encouragement. Seeing him so active and over the top is really unusual but it’s so rare so far that seeing it is certainly a delight.

Grade: B

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.