The new year is upon the residents and they’re going through the motions in their own weird ways.
What They Say:
New Year’s traditions, dreams, and tricks are talked about, while Yurume receives a gift from her mother. / Write an embarrassing secret that you can’t tell others. Some take it as a joke, but one takes it to heart.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
When New Years comes around, there’s all sorts of fun little traditions that come into play in Japan that always interest me. Yurumates of course has to play with it some as the gang delves into that kind of celebration. Everyone has their own little quirks to it as Yurume talks about hers when it comes to what she does with milk, which is just weird but definitely fits her personality. Especially with what she discovers about the milk. The whole thing feels more like a summer story though as it comes across as though they’re about to tell scary stories instead. Throw Kumi into the mix and it’s just all over the place from there, especially with her dead fish eyes that has you laughing at everyone else’s expressions.
With episode eleven, the show goes and does something fun where you have the gang writing embarrassing secrets. This is a tried and true tradition, especially since a lot of the time they’re secrets you really want to share. Coming off of their talk about their first dreams of the new year, it goes into the secrets and is amusing to watch as they deal with some of their firsts that they have. It’s a mellow kind of humor with the usual wordplay of course and Kumi naturally skews everything. When it gets to the secrets, you have to laugh as it unfolds, especially as Matsukichi gets further abuse.
In Summary:
The two episodes here focusing on New Years and some of its traditions, at least within this particular place, offers up some cute bits along the way. The first episode hits things a bit faster and just runs with it as it deals with New Years directly while the second is a bit more mellow overall, showing the gang about as expected without going overboard. Though as always, there feels like there’s attempts to screw each other over which is admittedly a part of the shows charm. What we get here is decent but I can’t help but to feel like the show is slipping just a little bit and needs to be a bit harder and sharper with its humor, a bit more vicious than it is here.
Grade: C+
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.
