What They Say
“Hahiken Adopts Vice Prez”
Content: (please note that the content portion of a review may contain spoilers)
When doing canvas trash pick up, Hachiken finds a stray puppy. He brings it back to the school, and after some debate and debilitating decides to pay to keep it at the school, easily getting permission from the teacher (“Sure, why not?”) Other students help how they can — Tokiwa carves a donation box for the puppy to wear around his neck to help pay for his food, and the ex-president of the Equestrian Club builds a dog house — and before you know it the school, and the show, has a new mascot animal.
The puppy brightens up the episode, firstly by the virtue of his own cuteness. Also, the puppy starts off without a name, so since it’s technically Hachiken’s dog, they start calling him “The Vice President’s Dog.” Within a day this whittles down to “Vice President,” and by consensus that becomes the dogs name. This leads to a few humorous moments, first as Hachiken starts thinking it sounds like everyone is praising him for being so cute — until they yell “Vice President peed on me!” This happens to of course greater effect when Aki starts talking to the puppy…
Hachiken’s determination and motivation are shown in a couple of ways in this episode. The first seems to go unnoticed by him, but the first comes up when he quickly takes on the responsibility of first finding a home for the puppy, then of footing the dog’s vet bills. As it tends to be with Hachiken in these situations, this is something he just does, and the other students are shocked and impressed, both humorously and seriously. He’s probably a little more conscious of what he’s doing later when, realizing the dog is going to walk all over him if he doesn’t change, he goes into intense studying mode, flips through every book he finds on dogs, and gets the puppy fully trained and obedient in a matter of days. This bit’s more funny than anything else, but it still displays the faith in book-learning Hachiken has after all these months.
Even with the dog, there are serious moments in this episode. Aki begins to figure out why Hachiken is so nice — he always had to hold himself back, and he doesn’t like to see others do it now. Nothing about her previous problem is revealed, but it’s possible a resolution in that area is coming up soon. He also gets a nice moment with Komaba. When Hachiken thinks Komaba is in danger of getting injured (Komaba actually easily steps aside while Hachiken gets hurt) his quick thought is that Komaba needs to play baseball, he can’t hurt himself. Komaba is clearly touched by this, but tells Hachiken it’s hard seeing him hurt over being a nice guy. It’s small, and the whole event is a bit forced (this happens just moments after someone says that Komaba can’t get injured) but it shows these two characters coming closer together.
Also, gross out moment of the episode — the students (and the viewers) witness a cow’s rectal exam, which includes scooping poo out of the cow’s anus. As pleasant as it sounds.
In Summary
Unlike last episode, this time we get a definite conclusion to the problem — how to take care of a puppy. Of course, this is because instead of dealing with emotions, Hachiken is confronted with a more clear cut issue. Though the puppy is probably going to be part of the plot, Vice Prez does create a lot of his own humor, mostly in the way Hachiken and the others interact with him. Happily, this humor doesn’t really come from Hachiken fumbling along, as he instead proves how skilled he’s becoming at figuring out animals and taking care of them. The mysteries of friends and relationships get a couple short moments this time around, but are mostly put on hold, hopefully something we return to next episode along with Vice Prez.
Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
