What They Say:
“Hachiken Runs Off”
Content: (please note that the content portion of a review may contain spoilers)
The episode title initially gave me the nervous impression that Hachiken would suddenly find himself overwhelmed with this new farm life and run away from the school — but the real reason for the title is much less serious. Things start off when Hachiken and Aki, out on a horse ride, see a crop circle. Excited, Hachiken tells the other students, only to find that rather than cool or mysterious, they all find crop circles annoying since they kill off crops.
Things seem to be getting stranger when helicopters do a nighttime flyby over the school, and Nishikawa, one of Hachiken’s roommates, talks to someone on the phone about “Area 51.” He then declares that “it” is coming, and that he’s going to sneak out of the dorms that night to see “it.” (Of course, whatever “it” is, is pointedly not described or even asked about, since the others know what he means, and Hachiken spends the rest of the episode thinking there are aliens.) They then come up with an elaborate plan to sneak out of the dorms, their seriousness with the whole situation just making it funnier as they go. With each new step becoming more over the top as one by one the friends get stuck and left behind — Beppu hates running, Tokiwa trips and rips open the seat of his pants, and Aikawa gets into a dangerous fight and chase with a strawberry thief.
It’s unsurprising when Hachiken and Nishikawa finally reach “it” and we find out that there are no aliens — “it” is a massive harvester, of which there are only two in Japan, and the students just wanted to lay their eyes on one. There comes a round of reasonable explanations — the harvester works at night so it can use the roads; Area 51 is the number of the lot it was harvesting — which is just part of the show’s usual “look at the crazy farm kids” joke. There is a bonus slapstick at the end, when the students find out that Tamako family is buying a harvester and she only wants to preview it, and it’s nice to see that she’s part of a joke that doesn’t involve her eating snacks (like earlier in the episode) but instead focuses on her take-charge, headstrong attitude.
In Summary
Somehow the show managed to come up with a more lighthearted episode than last time with the pizza making, but they pulled it off with fake aliens and kids being excited about machinery. Hachiken is dragged along, and in the end is one of the two who finally make it to the end, but most of the focus really goes on some minor characters like Nishikawa and Beppu, and even though it’s in an over the top setting, it’s nice to see parts of their personalities shine through more clearly. And the show doesn’t completely ditch character growth for this gag, as Hachiken comes to the realization that he’s had fun running around with his friends, and that his time at the school has passed far more quickly than he realized. Plot-wise, this episode is something you could skip, but it’s so much fun it’s worth watching with the rest.
Grade: A-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
