“Even If We’re Just Playing, He’s My Kohai…”
What They Say:
Shinozaki is an office worker who is taken care of and coddled by his senior team member Shiori Katase: a gorgeous, profoundly kind, loving, and diminutive woman.
Shinozaki certainly hopes that she’s not doing it out of duty… but her joy of doing so increasingly exposes her feelings!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The cold open for this installment is amusing as we get another random magical girl moment thing and it’s certainly fun. I don’t mind these things too much since it’s amusing to place the characters in other settings, especially briefly, so I can chuckle at it without really paying it too much mind. I’ll easily admit it doesn’t do much for me but it’s just amusing to see things like the manager coming across as he does or Shinozaki as the demon lord. But it’s just fluff for the fans who enjoy such things and it doesn’t detract from the show proper because of the way it operates. By doing smaller stories within each episode, even if they blend together, you’re able to get something different and enjoyable without feeling like it overcommits to a particular bit. And when a show does overcommit, hoo boy does it tend to go badly for a subset of viewers.
With the main storyline, we get the reveal that it’s the 40th anniversary of the company and part of that celebration will be a competition between new hires. We learn how the manager had won it previously when he started but you can see how badly this is going to go. The winning department will get a prize of a trip to a luxury resort in Okinawa, so we get some fun of Shiori in a swimsuit because yes, that is where his mind will go. Naturally, this will push the manager to want to win and it ups the competitive side within the department pretty well. There’s a lot of small office politics and relationship dynamic stuff that comes up here, particularly with the manager and a competitor that he has as well, which only ups the nature of things as she gets some additional incentive to win by claiming the manager as her own if her group wins. That certainly can shake things up but it also shows how things could go both better and worse for Hayakawa if that happens.
The second main story, which comes in shorter, has the cast working in one of the daycare facilities helping out and getting research. It’s fun to watch because they’re all done up in the usual outfits with aprons and the like and there are certainly a few visions of what they’d be like as a parent/partner as well. Everyone has a certain amount of adorableness because of the outfits and just watching the kids and all their personalities come to life. The imagination moments are definitely a lot of fun but the time doing the work and helping the kids really lets Shiori shine because it manages to make her not seem as young as she does most of the time. It’s definitely amusing to watch the fantasy sequences play out amid all of this and the reactions to it all because it leans into what we already know would be a lot of fun. And part of it just reminds me that the shows that actually deal with this tend to be manga adapted into live-action as opposed to anime and that just frustrates me as it feels like some lost opportunities.
In Summary:
It’s a pretty simple episode overall and I think it spent a little too much time on the wrong subject. The competition and office politics side has its fun and showing the way that the manager is in-demand works well and opens up some possibilities. But what we got from the daycare side of things and the way that Shiori and Shinozaki got to bond a bit more in some new ways was a lot more fun and enjoyable. And who knew it just took putting Shiori around little kids to make her seem more like an actual adult? The fantasy sequences are certainly amusing and obviously, they lean into the fanservice at times as well, but that’s baked into a show like this and it’s thoroughly enjoyable.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
