What They Say:
The café patrons suggest different ways to cure Polar Bear’s insomnia. Unable to sleep, Grizzly does some work around the café while Polar Bear shares a story from their youth.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One of the more interesting underlying aspects to the series is that while everyone has problems of one kind or another over the course of it so far, Polar Bear has largely been free of them. His cafe does decently enough, he’s got a good stable of friends that he does things with and he’s almost always vastly entertained either by the things going on around him or his own sense of humor. With his puns and general wordplay, he’s always making himself laugh on the inside (though perhaps it’s a desperate cry for help) and that always allows him to look like he’s without worries. That changes a little bit here in the first half of the episode as Polar Bear is suffering from insomnia.
That gets everyone to come up with different ways to help, though they’re all generally rather specific to the animal at hand. Panda’s thoughts on it are the most easily discounted simply because he falls asleep anywhere at the drop of a hat. The group does go outside the norm a bit for some help as Grizzly is drawn into it, out of his hibernation again, and his attitude is just what you’d expect as he’s angry but helpful in trying to help his friend. The various methods are fun as we see them tried, including some late night headphone work with Penguin recording some content to help him out. Of course, it has a bit of an unexpected aspect to it in that it puts him to sleep practically instantly, which kills a lot of what Penguin’s original intent was.
With the hibernation season being so screwed up for Grizzly, it’s not a surprise that he’s out of sorts and awake doing things when he should be asleep. What that does is gives us a chance to have a tale of his past with Polar Bear shown, back when they were student uniforms in high school and practically looked like punks. This story plays out like a bit of a standard old school piece where Grizzly has a girl who he has his eyes set on and Polar Bear is his friend that will help. The two are fun to watch in this instance since we get to see something long traditional, the kind of style of anime that I actually grew up on to some degree, and it’s comical seeing these guys in this situation even if they do largely play it straight.
In Summary:
Polar Bear Cafe has two very different stories here with a stronger focus on Polar Bear than usual, though the second half is really more about Grizzly. I really liked the first half with how it dealt with the insomnia problem and the way everyone had a solution, some of them a bit wacky, before the final one was discovered. The second half is a very laid back and mellow piece that takes us back to Grizzy and Polar Bear’s younger days in school which deals with a love that can’t happen between Grizzly and the girl of his dreams. It really shows a new angle to the bond that the two of them share, building upon their younger years which we saw earlier, and just makes you smile with the tender aspect of it that’s there as well. Very good and fun stuff all around that expands the characters and makes them even more engaging.
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.
