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)
The odd nature of this show continues to delight me for the most part as it provides its weekly dose of weirdness, surreal comedy and situations and just some plain, good fun that goes big and wide in surprising ways. In particular, seeing how Takkun handles situations involving Muromi and the others just hits the right spots. Such is the case here as he goes to enjoy the simple things of summer but ends up coming across Otohime and she’s just a surly person to deal with in general. We get a bit more of her back story and it’s hilarious to see how she got so caught up in the financial collapse of the last few years and lost so much, which has resulted in her being where she is now. Takkun certainly sympathizes with her struggles and seeing how he manages her in a way makes him come across as all the wiser.
Sadly, his dealings with Muromi continue to just be difficult ones since her personality makes it so. As we’ve seen before, she’s just overactive and loud, which draws in others in bad ways, including Otohime since the two have a longstanding problem between each other. Seeing how Takkun inserts himself into is hilarious, if incredibly dangerous. You have to like this episode just in how Takkun walks through so many different people’s lives in varying ways and the silliness that comes from a lot of it, as well as the way he’s just so accepting of it all being normal at this point in time. With Otohime showing up throughout the episode as well, it nudges her along with him in a rather neat way and draws them slightly closer to each other than they were before.
In Summary:
Muromi-san has a minor role in the episode overall, but the ensemble feel of the series and the way it can shift them around definitely works for the best. Takkun has light roles from time to time but he’s involved in all three of the “stories” that happen here and it’s definitely amusing to see how he interacts and copes with the varying strange people that have entered his life. There’s not a lot of strong material in this one compared to past episodes, but just the general flow and feel of it with how they interact with each other made me grin, as well as the bookend aspects of the poor convenience store worker.
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.
