What They Say:
One day, Mukoujima Takurou, a boy in high school who loves fishing, catches a pig tailed mermaid called Muromi-san who speaks in the Hakata dialect. She comes to visit Takurou often, along with her fellow mermaids Sumida-san, Fuji-san, Levia-san, Hii-chan, and even some other fantastical creatures such as Yeti and Harpy!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Muromi-san continues to impress in a lot of ways with what does, including the introduction of Otohime in the previous episode that expanded the show even further when it comes to scale and epicness of the mermaids and what they do. Thankfully, as we’ve seen before, the show doesn’t overplay its hand when it comes to the characters so they’re not run into the ground. Even Muromi has had some light appearance episodes. But she’s out in full force this time around as Takkun is fishing in the river and she dresses up as a kappa in order to mess with him a bit, not that it works. She just continues to frustrate and annoy him, but she has some adorable moments with it and how she did the costume. At least until she opens her mouth while eating and it just get disturbing.
The show does bring in a real kappa, which Takkun has a truly serious freakout over for purely sexual reasons, and that just makes it all the more hilarious. The nods to past stories about kappa and how the relationship with humanity has been is covered nicely and definitely paints an amusing picture. The episode here is a bit more varied in general as it covers a few smaller things, but mostly works on dealing with the kappa, Kawabata, and some of what his life is like, past and present. Kawabata and Takkun certainly have some amusing moments together, including “awkward silence”, but it’s the kind of situation where you just have to laugh at what Takkun has been involved in since first meeting Muromi and the path his life has taken.
In Summary:
With some variance to the kinds of people that we’ve seen so far since the introduction of Muromi, it’s rather fun to see them go the kappa route. Kawabata has a great look about him and has some hilarious interactions as he deadpans not only with Muromi but also Takkun. Takkun continues to be a great kind of lead character for a show like this as he reminds me of someone that could have easily stepped out of the Urusei Yatsura universe and just found some quiet time to himself until the mermaids showed up. This episode plays a little overlong at times with a few of the gags, but the overall ideas are good and there’s some really amusing gags along the way to make it entirely worthwhile.
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.
