What They Say:
“Hot Springs”
While on an open-air school trip, Raku mistakenly ends up in the women’s hot spring. When his female classmates show up to bathe, he must try and find a way to escape before being caught and labelled as a peeping tom.
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
We’ve finally reached the obligatory bath/hot springs/girls being naked episode here, and boy is it a bath episode. I’ll admit to having not watched much harem anime in my days, and those I have I don’t recall a bath episode in them. I’ve been woefully underexposed in this portion of my anime fandom, I know. So I don’t know if this one plays any different from all the others. What I can say is that it was hilarious while not being so overtly titillating as to be distracting.
It starts exactly where we left off last episode, with Kirisaki in her room contemplating her first love. She wants Tsugumi to check out where that first love happened, but they’ve got an overnight trip to a hot spring. It surprises Kirisaki, because it’s a Saturday. Who goes to school on a Saturday?! Well, if it’s a hot spring, I guess it’s ok.
Of course, Kirisaki is really excited for it because she was not really exposed to this kind of camaraderie up until this point. It’s really thanks to Raku that this all happened, but she’d never admit to it.
The whole episode, while called “Hot Springs,” is about confessions. Kirisaki remembers that her first love had a scar on his forehead, just like the one Raku has. She finds this out by accidentally dropped hot water on him. She trips over a log, which is like the show telling us that they know it’s ridiculous and are pointing out just how stupid it is. They want to get to this point and they’ll use a stupid log to do it. As is the course for the show, though, Raku doesn’t remember where he got the scar. An animal, probably, which is how Kirisaki remembers her first love getting the scar.
The whole gang plays old maid before dinner in their room, deciding that the loser will have to tell everyone else about their first love. Onodera and Kirisaki, who are extremely readable, sit on either side of Raku. Raku ends up taking all of Onodera’s jokers and Kirisaki ends up taking all of Raku’s. In the end, it’s just the two false lovers and three cards when the teacher barges in. It’s a nice little scene that show’s Raku’s compassion toward both his crush Onodera and the tsundere Kirisaki.
Raku ends up in the wrong bath after dinner, a part of Claude’s evil plan to make him a peeping Tom. It works, as he ends up the first in the girls’ bath, but Kirisaki is second and she VOWS to hide him. Otherwise, they’d live for three years as the peeping Tom and his girlfriend.
This sequence is fanservice all the way, but it doesn’t bother me as much as other fanservice things I’ve seen. The focus was on Raku and trying to escape and it’s like the fanservice was just an extra treat to the narrative. Steam covers all the fun parts, of course. Can’t be showing that on TV. Maybe it’s because it’s just an extended part of Kirisaki and Raku trying to get out of these ridiculous situations they’ve put themselves in. It actually shows a kind of kinder side to Kirisaki while at the same time a sort of malicious side, because she throws Tsugumi and Onodera under the bus to distract everyone so Raku can escape.
He does finally escape, through a tunnel that leads to the male bath. The white knight doesn’t even tell the other guys about the tunnel, which is the mark of a true gentleman.
In Summary:
I think I remember reading this in Viz’s Weekly Shonen Jump just because it was an extra chapter and I was about to review the then-upcoming show at the time. I can’t seem to find it now, but I also didn’t look that hard. Anyway, the episode provided with some good entertainment, but woefully little else. The introduction of Tsugumi has really added to the mix in terms of character interaction and variation in storytelling, but it all seems familiar now. Nisekoi is losing the luster it once had, yet it is still genuinely entertaining. Part of that is the distinctive visual style Shinbo and SHAFT employ, but only more episodes will tell if it can hold up on style alone.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: Radeon 7850, 24 in. Vizio 1080p HDTV, Creative GigaWorks T20 Series II
