What They Say:
Its end of the year cleaning at the cafe and the New Year brings up reflection.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the year comes to an end in the show as it does in the real world, we get to see how the gang goes through this varied experience. Not surprisingly, end of the year cleaning is a big part of things and we see how Panda is kicked out of the house quickly in order to get it done. His mother continues to be amusing with the one-trick gag, but since we’ve seen her doing many other things as well with the other mother’s and ladies she knows, it softens it a bit so that it doesn’t feel trite and tired. We get to see her be parental and doing the right thing and we get to see that Panda knows his best place to be is at the Cafe.
And of course, the Cafe is getting things underway for its end of the year activities which includes lottery prize games, something that Panda is terribly excited about. Even Penguin gets into it a bit until they both realize that their prizes are cleaning gear and that it’s best to use it within the Cafe itself. Not all the prizes are bad though and Llama makes out really well with his since it’s a big dose of free food, though even that does help Polar Bear in the end. And as it goes on, others show up as well and it turns into a bit of a fun cleaning party that even gets Grizzly involved for a bit against his better judgment since he should be hibernating. It’s pure Polar Bear in how he makes things work in a way that benefits him to the frustration of others, though he at least rewards them nicely.
The second half works through some mellow material for the most part as everyone gets closer to the end of the year period and there’s just little jobs to do. It shifts between a few different areas and works more with non-connective gags more than anything else, but it is fun to see them talk about end of year plans and the like. The New Years Eve time together is fun since they do things like noodles under the sky, but it’s a bit hard on the human characters since it’s so cool out and they went for cold noodles at first. With some nice flashback montage material to some of the fun events of the past year, the show brings the New Years Eve night to a close well in a mellow way, but it also throws some last minute fun as you get late night arrivals such as Anteater and Koala showing up as well as many others. It has a sweet and nice tone to it that really makes it work well.
In Summary:
As the series works towards closing out the year, noting that they will be back next year since the show has been slotted for a fifty episode run, we get a pretty mellow episode overall. Cleaning takes on some importance at the start as is usual and it’s fun to see the quirks in the characters as Polar Bear suckers them into doing his bidding. He has to be the nicest cunning evil overlord there ever was. As it goes on and the holiday gets closer, there’s more mellow material and smaller gags, but it all ends as one would expect as everyone is in the company of good friends, having a good time and being excellent to each other. Which is what Polar Bear Cafe is all about.
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.
