A one-sided rivalry enters the mix!
What They Say:
Yonomori Kobeni is a high school student who leads a pretty normal life… and then the day of her 16th birthday arrives. Despite having very little presence, her fiance, Mitsumine Hakuya shows up suddenly along with her sister-in-law, a little girl named Mitsumine Mashiro. Without any prior explanation, they begin their peculiar life together. Kobeni’s older sister, Yonomori Benio, who has has a sister complex and is a bit of a pervert is thrown into the mix and things get even weirder. Kobeni’s life is no longer normal.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After a relatively pleasant Valentine’s Day, there are no pressing matters to be dealt with on the side of the main characters. To keep the show going until there is, then, there needs to be some input from outside forces we haven’t seen yet. That arrives in Konoha, a girl we haven’t gotten to know yet, and Niko, her school newspaper friend as perfect for her role as every other school newspaper reporter in anime.
Konoha appears very composed at first, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to be reminded that the public face people in this show put on is often comically contrasted to their true selves. The obvious example is Benio, and in the case of Konoha, her entire inner character as we’re introduced to it revolves around her obsession with Benio as she portrays her outer self to be. Her importance in the story comes from her jealousy for those closest to Benio, her little sister and her littler sister-in-law, who the true Benio of course lavishes with her affection.
Alone Konoha prefers to brood from a distance and give evil eyes to those she considers rivals despite the ignorance on the opposite side, but her buddy Niko is always ready for a good scoop, and so the events begin, which serve to tie together the roles of the established cast with these new faces. It sets up for most of the episode to be a series of failed attempts to uncover some dark secret on one side and misunderstandings on the other. It sounds simple enough, but it actually injects a good dose of fresh humor into the show that it hasn’t gotten much of lately. These new character types are different enough from anyone we already know to make the interactions fun to watch even if the humor isn’t the most original or clever.
But for as much as this seems like filler compared to the more substantial revelations we’ve gotten not too long ago, the later parts of the episode reveal that there’s a lot more to Konoha than just a comedic blob of jealousy, and her role suddenly becomes a lot more notable in the long run. Although subtle, her reaction to Hakuya suggests a triangle a little more serious than the one with Benio in the middle, and the potential for how it might tie into her initial interest in Benio might work out well. At any rate, it’s good to have a new character both fun and important, especially since the latter wasn’t very expected.
In Summary:
Benio is popular enough at school that it’s not unexpected to see someone a little jealous about the affection she shows exclusively to her “little sister” pair, and fortunately, the first real case of that we see ends up being pretty fun. Konoha on her own might not carry this, but with the addition of the standard passionate reporter Niko, there’s a lot to enjoy here. What’s more, it turns out that Konoha actually has ties to the more unusual side of this series, and that promises to make her role much more important in the coming episodes.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
