…at the end.
A lot of shows suffers from the “great first episode, but flat second episode” syndrome. This one is no exception. Another thing I don’t like about the direction it takes in this episode – It tells the moral of the story flat out at the end. This is too much like a children’s tale.
Mizuki encounters a fox spirit, which turns out to be a nice a little critter that doesn’t do any harm at all. It even helps her out a lot with her latest project. Her sister Shizuru doesn’t worry about this little one because she hasn’t heard about anything harmful about it. Her little expose on the spirit serves as one of these side notes a parent may use to explain for the child.
Mizuki starts doing very well on everything, and then for latest project, she does what a lot of over zealous students trying to be good does – taking over and does everything by herself.
She realizes that she’s just being selfish, and when her friends/classmates decide to leave her alone for sometime, she blames the fox spirit, who doesn’t understand why she gets angry.
The fox spirit is chased away by the housecat Mikke (grandpa put a spell on the cat to eat and fight spirits), and Mizuki regrets yelling at it.
In the end, the two sisters go to the shrine where the fox spirit first appear, and Shizuru talks about the moral of the story (without saying “moral of this story”, but they might as well get a narrator and do it).
The end. No, I’m not kidding. I don’t blame you if you stop reading this review right here.
It was nice listening to Shizuru talking about the moral of the story like a big sister next door; I’m sure little boys (read: “little” Otaku “boys” staying up late at night listening to their favorite Ayako-onechan telling them bedtime stories…ooooooh) would definitely appreciate this episode. Ayako’s voice is really soothing and sounds like a string of bells chiming softly in the gentle spring wind.
I’ve noticed that the music is a mix of traditional instruments and modern beats. I’ve never really appreciated the modernization for traditional music that a lot of Japanese artists try to do in order to appeal to the masses. Rin, a Japanese group of 3 ladies that play the traditional instruments very well, tend to have that problem. Their beautiful instrument play often gets accompanied by ugly techno beats that jars the exotic and fascinating melodies and rhythm these ladies play. “Rin” sang the ending song for “Samurai 7”. They did well for that song and not a lot of modern stuff was mixed in.
Anyway, I kept on expecting something extraordinary to happen or the fox spirit to try something bad on Mizuki, but the episode still ended happy-happy. It wasn’t a fun watch for me. Hence
67% recommended for your daily anime diet. The seiyuu power of Kawasumi Ayako is what keeping it interesting for me up to this episode. I don’t know if I care to watch this one some more.
