What They Say:
Polar Bear gets a taste of what’s it’s like to be on the receiving end of puns. Full-Time Panda and Llama have a wild night!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the season continues on, I find myself growing more and more concerned about poor Grizzly. I’ve liked him from the start when he debuted here, but with him in his hibernation period, it’s definitely getting to be hard to not feel for him even more. Every time he gets close to getting some real sleep, something comes up that causes him to lose out on it. It’s unfortunate for him but I absolutely love the way he just gets so frustrated by it all and takes it out on Polar Bear, who is often the one who does him in. Even worse, Grizzly is getting more and more used to this so there’s a chance he’s just going to be cranky all year round at this point.
What Grizzly does set into motion here after the latest wake up call is to get the gang at the cafe to work with him on a separate problem, namely that of the many, many puns that Polar Bear uses. The idea is to do the same thing to him by providing puns constantly every time he talks. While Polar Bear can do this all by himself with ease, it takes everyone going at him in order to make the point. The puns go pretty well here since Polar Bear thinks they can’t keep up with him, but with all of them going at it, it puts him on the run in order to get some time away from it all. You do feel for Polar Bear, but the gang is at the point where they need him to ease off just a little bit. It’s a fun bit overall since the way they do the puns with the stills of different things makes for some fun visuals, even if like the gang I do find his puns to be a bit much at times.
With the second half of the show, things take a rather unexpected turn in terms of the pairing that goes on. With the size of the cast, they can come up with some interesting configurations at times. This time we get to see Full-Time Panda and Llama going at after work together for a few drinks and fun, which leads to some really amusing times. The time out takes them to a few places and they get more and more drunk, even while coming across Polar Bear filling in for Otter and Rin-Rin out for a few drinks himself, who ends up hooking up with them for awhile. When Grizzly gets involved, it just gets sillier. Of course, it’s a wild night for the animals but it’s pretty tame overall considering the audience and characters, but it’s a good deal of fun.
In Summary:
Polar bear Cafe has a pair of pretty fun stories here as it goes through two very different things. The first half is fun as it makes the pun side of the series enjoyable, something I can’t always say that it is, as the gang decides to show Polar Bear what it’s like to be the recipient of so many of them. His panic is fun and the way everyone tries so hard works nicely. The other half just lets some of the supporting players have more time out and about a bit where they end up getting pretty nicely drunk in a relatively safe way. It’s simple and inoffensive for the most part and just lets some silly gags take place without really doing too much of anything. Full-Time Panda and Llama tend to not get a lot of time so letting them do this was definitely fun.
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.
