What They Say:
It’s the day before the girls will climb Mt. Tanigawa. While Aoi bakes a pound cake to take along, Kokona celebrates her birthday early with a stroll around Hanno in her brand-new hiking shoes.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While spending an episode focusing on Aoi and Kaede dealing with summer homework isn’t something that you really want to see a lot of, the show did it in a fun way as it built upon previous events with Aoi, her climbing enthusiasm and her new job in order to pull it together well. There was also some nice further bonding between her and Kaede over it as it went on and some cute little bits with Aoi’s mother, who is one of the more normal and realistic mothers out there in the anime world where mothers tend to simply not exist for the most part.
With this episode, we’re closing in on the actual day itself that they can go on their climb to Mt. Tanigawa and Aoi is going to be going all out for it. She’s baking a pound cake to bring along that will make everyone happy, which is pretty much her normal operating style. That sets the tone well for her, but this episode also takes a welcome turn in exploring the least known character of the group with Kokona. Since her birthday is coming up, she’s excited about the climb and doing all her packing for it, but she also does a bit of digging and ends up accidentally finding her birthday present from her mother. Not one to be shy, not only does she open it, but she wears the new climbing shoes inside. In a way, it definitely says a lot about her character, especially since she takes the new shoes for a walk around.
Kokona gets on quite a walk, in fact, as she not only walks around the house but hits up one of the nearby nature retreats and spends her time visiting shrines and other low laying areas to enjoy it. She has such a whimsical nature about it, an almost child-like view of things, that just experiencing all of it refreshes her in such a huge way. Kokona’s certainly a pleasant young woman and very connected with nature, which makes watching her in this form pretty enjoyable. Though she gets her present out early and wears it in, she does it with the right kind of mind and heart about it and that, along with the relationship she has with her mother here, comes through wonderfully.
In Summary:
There’s not a lot here really when you get down to it, but what we do get is a pleasant and enjoyable bit of time spent with Kokona. While I, as a parent, may cringe a bit at what she does with the wrapped present, the result we get from it as she goes on her walkabout is nice. It’s a good balancing episode to the hard work piece that we got recently with Aoi and it has a good connection with nature aspect that makes it fun to watch and really very relaxing when you get down to it.
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.
