Nobody knows the pain that Mio feels.
What They Say:
Mio is poisoned, Makoto is caught, Yukko makes a tough decision, and Mai tries to make peace with the Professor.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One of the things that does crack me up the more we got to know the characters is the way that Mio in particular overreacts to things. The early segment with her here has her being given so many things to eat or drink that she finds to be so completely disgusting that she’s completely over the top in agony over it. Every time she turns around, there’s another piece of the puzzle thrown her way to deal with and it gets so bad that she ends up with some serious childhood flashbacks that has her thinking of her life. With the amount of bad things that she’s being given, it’s little wonder that she’s just freaking out over it. Of course, the things she thinks are in these dishes are so disturbingly awful that you can’t help but to understand why she’s acting like she does.
The episode does sidetrack to a character we don’t see too often with Makoto and it’s pretty amusing as his club room is getting cleaned by Izumi and she discovers some less than appropriate magazines in there, which sends him over the top in a fit of embarrassment and anger while she’s just going on about how he’s not old enough for those things, even if he is. The way he deals with it is pretty fun and her responses to it all, including taking a peek at them, is spot on. Makoto has a couple of good moments with Takasaki as well as he uses his desire to have a relationship with Izumi as a way to get what he wants, which is a club advisor. Of course, it doesn’t go anywhere near as well as he’d like but the gist of the matter is that Makoto simply has some of the worst luck of all the students in the school.
The episode spends some time with the secondary cast which works well, but it’s when it deals with the core cast that I get the most pleasure. There’s a brief segment involving Yukko who is have a Very Bad Day and continually just has things go wrong. It’s short, simple and yet beautiful because you can totally understand how she feels. Te same can be said for the final segment in which Mai returns to the Professors house with Nano in an attempt to fix things a little bit with her. While Nano is oblivious, the two site down for a face to face meeting over it. The two have such diverse ways of talking with each other before they finally come to something that eases the tension that you have to laugh at the child like nature of both of them.
In Summary:
Like other recent episodes, My Ordinary Life doesn’t exactly hit it out of the park but it has a very enjoyable series of stories that take place. It largely depends on the characters involved with what works or doesn’t work and I continue to find myself drawn to the main cast, though there are supporting characters that make me very happy as well. This one wins when it comes to characters like Mio and even the short Yukko segment, but the best was the surprising one involving Makoto as he deals with his sister and with the teacher that likes her. It hits a lot of very cute moments. And just like the other recent episodes, I can’t help but to be mesmerized by the closing sequence as one of the best out there with the way it paints such a full, rich small town life.
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.
