What They Say:
Valentine’s Day! Also known as “National Standardized Girl Power Exam Final Answer Finals!” There aren’t any girls at Umanohone so low in girl power that they can’t participate! Or are there? With the huge girls’ event right around the corner, the girls of Umanohone are feeling lofty and restless and head-achey. Maximum girls power! Go! Super-cute red-faced combo!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Denki-gai managed to improve a nice bit in the previous episode as we got a look at Hiotan a bit more with the whole Christmas arc and her spending time at the Director’s house for awhile. That helped to show a bit more of her but also of the Director, which was a necessity since we’d seen only one side of him. There was a lot of fun with the drunken activities and the fallout from it, but the big takeaway from me was starting to feel more comfortable around these characters. The Director continues to play an interesting role in the show since he’s largely trying to manage everyone while also being his own weird self amid the chaos of a store like this.
The cold open for this is actually a nice bit of fun too, as we see Hiotan learning that everyone is getting their own areas to promote books in order to drive more personal sales but also to have them competing against each other for those sales. Getting a look at the individual interests is enlightening enough in itself. Amusing, the Director’s shelf is all about the boys-love stuff while using Hiotan’s image in order to sell it, which means it’s the best selling shelf. For Hiotan, she’s struggling with what she wants to put there since she’s so mainstream in tastes and that won’t help her stand out against the other far more creative shelves in the store. In the end, with a little help from some of the other women on the staff, we see her discover some new things and in the end come up with a decent little shelf that helps her to grow as a person and an employee a bit.
The second half has a good bit of fun with her discovering what real boys-love can do, which in turn leads us into the Valentine’s Day segment of the episode. With a whole lot of women in the store to shop amid the appeal of Sommelier, we also get the return of the city official that’s also an ero book lover, which sets everyone on edge until they realize why she’s there. This turns into a bit of an attack that sets Sommelier on the move where he goes on quite the journey, with Fu-girl chasing right after him, in her attempt to try and ease his suffering. It’s outlandish in presentation but it shows how she views it well until she ends up at his apartment. It doesn’t go deep or anything here, but it does have some fun and it lets us get to see Sommelier and Fu a bit in a way that we haven’t so far, which is nice.
In Summary:
Denki-gai managed to make some improvements in the previous episode and it has a good bit of fun through the first half of this episode here. Focusing on employee shelves and their marketing of books to try and get people to try new things and improve sales in general is a tried and true method that largely does work well. There’s a lot of fun with the variety of the shelves and what they bring to the table, as well as seeing Hiotan’s journey. The second half goes back to the whole ero well once again and while I can find humor in that, they don’t do much with it that works well here and it mostly just feels drawn out. There are cute moments, especially at the end, but a lot of it just ends up being forgettable, which is the worst thing of all.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
