Visiting the Mimorin compound will reveal something truly fascinating.
What They Say:
Bossun, Himeko, and Tsubaki get a huge surprise when they visit Mimorin’s house. Then, the old ramen guy from episode 29 is back for revenge! This time, his Food Fight uses Western-style food and Bossun feels obliged to participate!
The Review:
With the way this series works, they now have a lot of characters and situations to draw from and revisit in different ways. This episode does a kind of double dose of that by dealing with characters we haven’t done too much with for awhile. It’s rather amusing though when you get them to put a reference in the episode summary about where we saw these characters before, going right down to the episode number. Not that it matters much since it’s not exactly something one remembers easily considering it’s been almost a year since that episode came out and we’ve seen so many things since then. I certainly don’t feel bad about not remembering the ramen guy.
The first half gives us time with Mimorin as Himeko, Bossun and Tsubaki end up coming with her to her home to hang out for a bit. It’s the kind of episode that takes the ultra wealthy character family to the extreme in a good way as we see the massive compound in the heart of the city and then get the truth of it inside. While there’s the building aspect on top, the deep elevator takes us to a city underneath that’s hilarious with farms, mountains, and a seemingly whole other economy that survives. There’s a point to all of it, but it was the weaker side of the story as it was dealing with candy and toys. Seeing this kind of really fun city within a city is what worked for me and left me enjoying it.
With the second half, we get the return of the ramen shop guy as the main trio end up running into him. He’s got a longstanding grudge with Captain over what she did the last time she visited there, causing him to give up his ramen business and starting a Western style restaurant instead. He’s intent on revenge when it comes to her, but it’s Bossun who steps up to defend her without her knowing in the food challenge. Something that you’d think he’d be good at when it comes to eating, but it’s a fierce world out there when it comes to competitive eating and it takes a bit for Bossun to really find his groove with it. It’s silly at times but mostly it just feels overly dramatic in a way that doesn’t elicit much in the way of laughs from me.
In Summary:
While there are parts of this episode that I liked, mostly dealing with the vast wealth and creation of a secret city under the surface, a lo tof what’s here left me feeling rather cool at best towards events. I like Mimorin and I like Captain but the stories here really don’t do much of anything to elicit real laughs or fun. Which is fine because the series has proven that it can do serious and good dramatic episodes at times. The problem is that they’re not trying to do that here, they’re trying to make me laugh and it just fell flat. Captain has only a small role in the second half, letting Bossun take the stage without her knowledge, and the main thrust of the first episode doesn’t give Mimorin a lot to work with and even the main focus of the story is quickly lost in favor of just taking in the hidden city. Sometimes an episode just doesn’t work.
Grade: C
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.