Fino gets a taste of customer service from a different perspective, working at the Lawson next door for one day.
What They Say:
Episode 04: “The Daughter of the Demon Lord will be Working at the Convenience Store”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Is it me, or did the opening animation get much more…bouncier?
Okay, that aside, the staff of Leon are asked by Elza to help her out, as the Lawson next door is short-staffed. As their main store is in Dyna and their only branch in the capital is here next to the Leon Magic Store, help won’t be coming until tomorrow. Seara is all keen to help out (she wants to wear the Lawson uniform), but Viper calls her on it and instead it is Fino who is sent to help out, even though she doesn’t want to.
Things are too quiet for Raul (obviously, Fino made a lot of noise) and he doesn’t know how to keep up a conversation with Nova very well. Seara asks him to check up on Fino at lunch time and things are fine over there. Things are not so fine for Raul back at the store though, since it appears that before Fino came along, he spent most of this time being completely nervous around Nova. Her open manner and lack of concern about being a subject for staring make things nearly unbearable for Raul. It’s not that hard to believe, as Nova is pretty much a walking sex fantasy.
There’s not really that much to this episode. It was cute to see Fino learn how to operate in the convenience store environment with help from Elza and Lamdimia. It was…rather boring to see Raul get all flustered over Nova, as understandable as that might be. About the only thing passing for “plot” this episode was a brief appearance of Airi at the Lawson, looking for the monthly job hunting guide among the magazines. It would appear what she told Raul before about having a job was not the truth (and the opening credit sequence has given us strong hints that Airi has a somewhat embarrassing future ahead of her in the world of work).
So, sadly the cuteness factor (Fino) was brought down a bit by the creepy factor (the overemphasis on Nova as just a sex toy, figuratively, of course). There was a segment after the end credits as usual, but this time it was just a cute little vignette showing that the lessons Fino learned about handling customers over at Lawson won’t readily translate to her normal day job at the Leon Magic Shop.
In Summary:
Fino goes to work at Lawson next door and learns a few things about handling customers that Raul was not quite capable of teaching her. It was cute to see her interact with Elza and Lamdimia. Back at the Leon Magic Shop, however, it seems most of the time was spent ogling over Nova. I guess they couldn’t come up with anything amusing to do there, so they just lazily went for fanservice. Not as strong an effort as the previous episodes, but one expects a show to settle in and slump a bit after the initial set up work has been completed.
Episode Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard