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 first bit focuses on the teacher, Karasuma-sensei, which was unexpected to say the least. The show has been all about the girls and any other character has been tertiary at best in terms of focus. But I don’t really try that hard to predict things about this show. But it’s a nice diversion to see the cute, clumsy antics of the teacher instead of the cute, clumsy antics of the girls. Shows like this shine when they’re at least trying to do something even slightly different, and this was slightly different enough to be pretty cool. It’s interesting to see things from a teacher’s point of view.
Alice’s jealous side shows again when she sort of stalking the teacher. I mean, it’s not really stalking, but it’s that kind of anime stalking when the camera cuts to Alice staring at the teacher whenever she’s saying anything to Shinobu. Like all things in lightweight shows like this, it’s resolved with no problems and little conflict. It was kind of creepy that the teacher named her rabbit after Alice, though. She should have said Alice in Wonderland, which is what I expected.
On a lazy Sunday, everyone’s apart. Aya’s finishing homework, Yoko’s playing with her siblings, Karen’s walking about playing with cats, and Shinobu and Alice are just hanging around. But, of course, through various happenstance, they all end up meeting up with each other in town. The meeting is short lived and more represents the fact that these five drift toward each other not through friendship, but through the forces of the universe (really scientific stuff like blood type and horoscopes are doing this). It’s a cute little message and perfect for the show.
In Summary:
The diversions of Karasuma-sensei was the best part of the episode, because everything else was cute, but not much else. At least the stuff with the teacher was a bit new, if not exciting. The little 30 second bits also remain solid, as they do well to break up the sometimes weaker, longer bits that make up the majority of the episode.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: Radeon 7850, 24 in. Vizio 1080p HDTV, Creative GigaWorks T20 Series II
