What They Say:
Shinobu Omiya is a 15-year old school girl. She may look like a classically Japanese girl with raven black hair and sweet eyes, but when she was a junior high school student, she actually went to stay with a host family in the UK. She misses her time abroad and one day a letter arrives for her by air mail.
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The girls have PE, but Alice forgot her PE clothes. She borrows a jersey from the teacher and shorts from Shino, but its fall, which means it’s cold. But as it turns out, Aya and Alice aren’t good at PE and struggle to keep up with Shino, who has a ton of stamina, and Yoko, who’s good at athletics.
Come lunch time, Karen comes in with a bunch of snacks. Alice points out how she might have been putting on weight since coming to Japan. And here’s the problem with this: These girls were created to be the perfect image of Japanese high school girls and they all look super cute and to be about 100 pounds. Yet everyone is so worried about their weight for some reason. There’s a really stupid stigma where you have to be thinner than a stick, and anime shouldn’t be pushing this unrealistic ideal onto the girls who may (but probably aren’t in the majority of people) watching shows like this.
The next segment is much better, as it’s just about fall and everyone’s impressions of it. But it all comes back to school when Aya says she thinks of studying when she thinks of fall (which I think is a poor correlation, but that’s me). Shino got a 6 on her last test, though, so it’s back to studying for everyone. Alice gives Shino special one-on-one English lessons and she finally scores well, a 96. This is a pretty feel good moment and does contrast well with the supposedly comedic weight segment. And this provides a much better message of “work hard and it will be rewarded,” which does need to be taught.
In Summary:
KINMOZA hasn’t really lost its way, but it’s gotten weaker in the mid-season slump. Alice and Karen have melded into the Japanese lifestyle and the cultural differences that were once super apparent are now barely there. Introducing a new character both isn’t going to happen and would be the easy way out, but something new has to happen rather than just a series of gags.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: Radeon 7850, 24 in. Vizio 1080p HDTV, Creative GigaWorks T20 Series II
