Episode 5: Super Bag in the Heart
What They Say:
A family intervention for a clean(ing) freak, Izumi’s day out, and a blind date.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Souta’s cleaning like a man possessed (of his own thoughts), and he is! Obsessed with trying to figure out why he was called an idiot by Inami last episode, Souta cleans the downstairs, the upstairs, and even cleans his sister’s glasses (while she’s wearing them). This leads into one of those rare and wonderful moments sporadically enacted throughout Wagnaria: Takanashi family scenes!
Due to Souta’s state, his younger sister, Nazuna, sympathetically inquires as to the nature of his distress and spreads the false news of her brother’s breakup with Inami to the other sisters. While trying to cheer Souta up, there’s an age joke and a drunk joke (I’ll let you figure out to which of the sisters they are assigned) but nothing from or about Izumi.
Souta’s older sloth sister Izumi has been blaming writer’s block on her younger brother’s girlfriend ever since she thought he had one due to some conclusion jumping in a previous season. Izumi claims his girlfriend took all his attention away, and now Izumi’s worried about her future. For her own need to have someone support her, she welcomes the breakup news as a chance to introduce Satou to a wonderfully supportive redhead she met by chance one day. Izumi takes great pains (well, great pains for Izumi) to set up the blind date, and there’s a couple good chuckles that come about from her going outside and exerting such effort, but the real magic’s in the blind date Satou eventually goes through with.
Of course the redhead in question is Inami, but her initial appearance is so ridiculous that I could not restrain my guffaw. (Count yourself lucky I did not (wholly) spoil that epic moment by embedding a screencap here that I will have saved for eternity.) Evidently, it was too much for the episode to handle as well, as it quickly shifts gears back to Wagnaria (the restaurant), where Yamada’s going through a tough breakup and asking her coworkers for advice. This is a parallel to Taneshima asking around about her school/job balance and Todoroki asking around about drinking etiquette and used as humorous contrast to those semi-serious situations. See, Yamada’s breaking up with her favorite food, natto, and that’s proving particularly hard to do. Luckily, she gets over it via unintentional support from her adopted family and coworkers and the transitive property of adulation. This all ends ridiculously, of course, and results in what is probably the best scene in the episode.
I lied. The best scene in the episode is the aforementioned blind date. Well, it’s not a date, really, but more of an arranged meeting. Aside from the bean pun at the end, what’s going on in the background during this scene says a lot, and I love that the show doesn’t actually point it out (so that I can now). Little kids are playing on a hill in the background and walking between the camera and Souta constantly, but he’s too wrapped up in thoughts about Inami to notice. He even gets a clue (I think) as to Inami’s feelings. Same thing goes for Souta’s red ears and hidden face when he gets home; the series never points them out or has Izumi ask about them, but Souta’s clearly flustered, and it’s not just from Inami’s projected heatwave.
In Summary:
It was a solid episode that made a lot of headway but still went nowhere. Frustratingly good. And just when things look like they could progress, the preview for next week’s episode seems to be tackling another side story … a Yamada-centric one! Until then, lives and loves hang in the balance. Can’t wait for next week!
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Xbox360 running Crunchyroll app via HDMI to Toshiba 40” LED 1080P HDTV. Sony 5.1 home theater system.
