Urusei Yatsura – 33 – Heaven Is a Date on Earth with You

With the possible futures mini-arc concluded, Urusei is back to self-contained segments, both of which have to do with the supernatural. First up, Mendou is out of school for a week, and when Ataru, Lum, Shinobu, and Ten visit, they learn he has an invisible ghostly octopus stuck to his head.

His sister painted a floral design to make it visible, but the sheer absurd sight of it tends to provoke laughter in everyone. Sakura and Cherry arrive to describe the phenomenon as a “cowalker”, or the spirit of the missing family octopus Akamaru.

When Cherry gets into a staring and funny face contest with the ghostly octopus, both get conked on the head, but since the octopus doesn’t have physical form, Ataru misses and conks Mendou on the head instead. Mendou draws his katana and a scuffle ensues.

When Ataru uses a pillow to block Mendou’s strike, it rips open to reveal Akamaru had gotten stuck in there while adventuring, as is his wont. Once he wakes up, his cowalker vanishes, and all’s well that ends well. As for why the adventurous octopus ended up in Mendou’s pillow, I think there might’ve been some wordplay lost in translation.

The true gem of this episode, and perhaps this entire season of Urusei, is “Last Date”, which starts from the delicate pastel POV of a sickly girl who often watches Ataru running past the hospital with a big smile on his face. Clearly smitten, she dreams of one day meeting him, as she learns his name from his mother.

Fast-forward to Ataru and Lum being summoned to Sakura’s for a favor: she needs him to go on a date with the ghost of the girl, whose name is Nozomi. The fact that she’s already dead is sad enough, but only by fulfilling her dreams in her diary of dating Ataru can she pass on to the hereafter.

When Lum sees the circumstances, she’s fine with Ataru going out with Nozomi (voiced by the perfectly-cast Iwami Manaka, Honda Tooru herself), and even as Nozomi provides him with more and more warm knit articles of clothing in the middle of summer, he toughs it out because he’s a decent guy, and because Nozomi is so gosh-darn pure, sweet, and charming.

After going on walks, to the movies, out for a bite, and finally on all the rides at the amusement park, the hour is getting late and Nozomi still hasn’t passed on. The reason is revealed at the end of her diary, as Nozomi, who died on Christmas day, last wrote of her wish to walk with Ataru in the midst of the falling snow.

Since they can’t wait until winter for snow to come, Ataru and Nozomi come upon an aesthetic substitute of a bright and beautiful fireworks show. Nozomi holds Ataru’s arm tight, and content that she’s seen and done everything she wrote about, she slowly vanishes from his sight, having passed on to heaven.

The realization that Nozomi is gone washes over Ataru, and the shot of him standing alone as the fireworks continue is heartbreaking as all get-out. Fortunately, he’s not alone, as Lum, Sakura, and Cherry soon join him. But after previously complaining about how hot he was in all the clothing Nozomi knit for him, he decides he’ll wear it all a bit longer. I’m sorry, but is it getting really dusty in here?

CERTIFIED GODDAMN TEARJERKER

Urusei Yatsura – 30 – What Dreams May Come

Ataru and Ten come across a strange vendor selling earmuffs for 150 yen a pop. Ataru plays hardball and manages to snag two sets for 200 yen, of which he expects Ten to pay back half. But when they put the earmuffs on, they swap bodies. Thus, the question is answered, “What would Ataru do if he had Ten’s body?” He seeks out cuties, of course, who are all to willing to give him a squeeze because he’s a cute-ass flying baby!

Ataru-as-Ten also ensures Ten-as-Ataru is kept at bay by Lum, who initially thinks Ataru hit his head so hard he thinks he’s Ten. When Ten encounters Sakura, her sixth sense doesn’t let her down, but her instinct to attack him causes Lum to castigate her for being so harsh to a child. Of course, Sakura’s instincts are accurate, as the Ten who wants to suckle her bosom is actually Ataru.

Cherry also buys a set of earmuffs, causing him and Ten to swap bodies while Ataru returns to his own. It’s a fun body-swap segment, though I wish it had gone farther. As it is, Kamiya Hiroshi and Yuuki Aoi do a great job imitating Ten and Ataru’s voice patterns.

The second half involves Ataru being on a late-for-school streak due to him trying not to rely on Lum to wake him up (often with electricity). She offers a shortcut using her alien technology to create a portal straight to school, which they travel through together. They arrive at school with five minutes to spare, but then we cut to his classroom as the morning bell rings, and neither he nor Lum are there.

That is because the portal didn’t just traverse space, but time as well. When Ataru enters his classroom, it’s on a Sunday afternoon ten years into the future, where his classmates are having a reunion. The future him happens to be out of the classroom when he arrives, but his older friends note that he looks just like Ataru, while his wife is also out looking for their son.

Ataru ends up unknowingly encountering his future son by chance, and he’s a little shit just like his old man. Lum is quick to embrace and comfort the child, but when he sees a very familiar lascivious look, she gets suspicious. When the little scamp finally says his name: Moroboshi Kokeru. Lum feels around on his head, doesn’t find any horns, and is immediately distraught.

And of course she’s distraught: if this was her son, he’d have horns, no matter how small. She concludes that in this future, she and Ataru don’t have a kid together. It begs the question of who exactly Ataru’s wife is in this future, but more than anything, Lum is devastated by the fact that it’s not her.

When Ataru prods Kokeru to go through the school gates, he calls the first woman he sees his mom, and it’s some unattractive old maid. This makes Ataru as depressed as Lum, and when she catches up to him, they both agree that it’s time to return to their time. But both Kokeru and Ataru are mistaken: the older lady isn’t his mother.

His real mother, and Ataru’s wife, is none other than his childhood friend Miyake Shinobu, lovely and resplendent in her striped suit. Ataru returns to his time with Lum not knowing that, while Lum refuses to accept that this future they experienced was the actual future, only a possible one.

Thus we end on an uncharacteristically somber note. I don’t doubt if Ataru stuck around long enough to discover Shinbou was his future wife, he’d be pretty happy. But Lum would probably feel even worse if she knew that. Will the fact they’re equally miserable at the end bring them closer together?

As for the Alice in Wonderland-style White Rabbit (previously teased in the OP) running through a galaxy of time doors … I assume that will be explained at some point, because it’s pretty random! It also hints that Lum is right: they only witnessed one future out of countless possible futures.

Urusei Yatsura – 29 – Kotatsu Sleds and Cow Bites

That title up above really gets to the immense variety inherent in Urusei Yatsura. Part of the joy of watching is having no idea what’s coming. The giant cat hasn’t had a focus segment for a while, but gets one this week as he buys a suspiciously cheap but well-made kotatsu that refuses to be covered with a blanket, ruining Lum’s 121st Othello win over Ataru.

When they see the Mendou family crest carved into the side, Ataru summons Shuutarou with an insult, and he tells them that because the table is made from the wood of the only cedar tree in the South Pole, it hates heat of any kind. That said if a kotatsu connoisseur like Neko can’t tame it, nobody can.

For several days and nights their cat-and-table chase disrupts the Moroboshi household. Finally, the two shake on a truce, and rather than use the kotatsu in the normal way, he uses it to pull a sled instead. It gets to stretch its legs, and Neko and Lum have a blast riding the sled. Everybody wins!

If a feral kotatsu that hates blankets isn’t random enough for you, how a bout a cow at the local pet store? This cow has a tendency to glomp hands; it glomps Ataru’s hand, then Lum’s hand. She shocks the cow, but is left with a wound on her hand that she goes up into her orbiting spaceship to treat.

After kicking back with some trashy space TV with Ten, including a program about a Dracula that turns an alien into a human girl (which is terrifying to said aliens), Lum has a nightmare about being transformed into a cow. When she gets up to brush her teeth, she notices her horns are a lot bigger, and very cow-like in shape.

Lum takes the next few days off, such that when a morose Ten shows up at school, Ataru and Shuutarou are eager to know what’s become of her. Then she shows up with a new hairdo hiding the larger horns, and Sakura can’t do much for her, since she has no knowledge of Oni anatomy. Ataru isn’t his usual selfish self here; he seems genuinely concerned for Lum and her somber mood.

He follows her out onto the beautifully rendered city streets in the rain (all the 70s and 80s-era cars driving by are a nice touch), and she starts saying weird stuff about if she should go missing and a cow show up at his door, she wants him to name it Lum and take good care of it. With that, she says goodbye and prepares to fly off, but in a very nifty bit of 3D animation, he catches her, and undoes her buns to reveal her horns.

She tells him she’s turning into a cow, but he tenderly takes her horns into his hands and pleads with her not to go anywhere, saying “I’m gonna take good care of you.” Sure, he means it in the context of the expectation she’ll turn into a full-on cow, but setting that aside, its one of his more romantic gestures in the whole run of the show, and the two end up crying in each others’ arms. It’s a very moooo-ving scene (I’m so sorry…)

It’s one of those times you realize why Lum loves Ataru so much. Most episodes he’s chasing some other girl who has no interest in him, but every once in a while he shows he cares … and in this case, starts building a cow pen in the backyard when Lum learns via Ten that her horns growing are a natural Oni function when one gets an infection, and they’ll eventually return to normal. So, there will be no LumCow! Got it? Good!

Urusei Yatsura – 09 – Dine and Dash

Cherry senses doom in the air (and in his stew)—and it arrives while Ataru is cleaning his room for Shinobu while Lum is bored out of her mind and simply wants to cuddle. Shinobu is accosted on her way to Ataru’s, and ends up arriving through the window, leaving Lum and Ataru to mistake her as a ghost.

Turns out she’s on the shoulders or Rei, Lum’s fiancé who takes the form of a giant tiger-ox-thing when he’s mad. When he’s not mad, he’s a ridiculously good-looking young man, which is all Shinobu cares about. In this regard, she’s basically a male Ataru!

Love is more than looks for Lum, who won’t give Rei the time of day. Every time she clings to Ataru, Rei gets upset and transforms into the beast. He’s only quelled by the arrival of Ataru’s mom, who is immediately smitten and dolls herself up to bring roasted potatoes for the handsome new guest.

In addition to being a Jekyll-and-Hyde menace who won’t leave Lum alone, he’s also an unrepentant glutton, eating all of the potatoes meant for everyone and at least breifly forgetting that he originally came there for Lum.

When Lum reasserts her prefrence for Ataru, Rei chases them out of the house (blasting a hole in the wall) and into a park full of lovey-dovey couples. Only every time he calls out to Lum to marry him, each on of the women in the park fall for him and accept his proposal.

After running around the park winning the hearts of the gals and the ire of the guys and eating all of the food vendor’s wares, the chase comes back to Ataru’s house, and all the people from the park follow them there. Basically, thanks to being Lum’s main squeeze Ataru now has the most chaotic and troublesome alien yet all up in his space.

It isn’t long until school and free study time is infected by a toxically persistent Rei. Mendou vows to protect Lum and the other girls in the class from Beast!Rei, which Lum is fine with, but then she runs into Ran in the hall.

An enraged Ran demands that Lum help hook her up with Rei, as she’s painfully shy around him. Meanwhile Rei transforms and all the girls flock to him, leaving Mendou with all the other dudes and pathetically trying to flaunt his wealth to get the girls back.

When Lum comes back in the classroom, Rei has already eaten most of the other girls’ lunches, so he prepares to pounce on her. But she’s only a decoy to allow an opening for Ran to swoop in with her lovingly-made bento just for Rei.

He slowly, politely eats the lunch, which makes Ran think her feelings are getting through to him, but then Cherry arrives with an even bigger bento and Rei eats it the exact same way, igniting Ran’s demon mode. Then, just as quickly as he arrived, Rei announces he’s hungry and rockets home.

Rei hopes he’ll come back soon. Lum and Ataru hope he never comes back, something they can share in as a couple. Alas, when Rei said “home”, he didn’t mean the Oni homeworld, but Ataru’s house, where he is eating when Lum and Ataru arrive … and then promptly faceplant in exasperation.

Rei may not technically be a one-note character, but his two notes (raging beast and hunky yet remorseless eating machine) played ad nauseum throughout the episode grew quite exhausting … which I guess is the point! I truly empathized with Ataru and Lum (and Ataru’s dad!) enduring Rei’s foolishness.

Even if I can’t always understand Lum’s love and loyalty to Ataru, I totally get how whatever fleeting feelings she may have once had for Ataru in the past have long since dissipated, and now she wants nothing to do with him. I hate to say it, but really does makes Ataru look like the more desirable man!

Urusei Yatsura – 07 – Pochi’s Odyssey

This week’s UY further expands its world, though not with more foxy alien chicks. Combining a pool episode with a beach episode, it introduces a lonely little demon living underwater who suddenly has a visitor. He happens to live at the bottom of the pool where Ataru, Lum, Shinobu and Mendou pay a visit. Since Lum’s default outfit is a bikini, it makes sense she’d pick a one-piece, while Shinobu opts for a bolder two-piece.

Even so, Mendou ignores her in favor of Lum’s new look, while both he and Ataru are distracted by Sakura in an even sultrier one-piece. When Ataru lunges at her, she rightfully pops him, and he ends up sinking to the pool’s bottom where the little demon guy lives. While Shinobu asks about Sakura’s fancy parfait, Lum is legit concerned about Ataru, who tags out when she arrives so he can surface for air.

After eating roughly a hundred parfaits, Sakura joins Mendou and Cherry in following Ataru, who swears there’s a freaky demon thing underwater. But when they reach his “home”, he’s surfaced to procure (read: steal) more snacks for his guests. Lum tags everyone to surface.

Eventually, everyone is back above water, studying the weird little guy. After all the commotion he caused making customers flee (his dad owns the pool) Mendou demands that the guy vacate the premises immediately. The others, feeling this was a bit harsh, wish the guy well as he departs, only for Ataru to find him having relocated to his family’s bathtub.

The conundrum of What To Do About The Weird Little Blue Guy continues in the second segment, and that question is answered immediately by Ataru’s mom, who asks him and Lum to take the guy to the beach and leave him there, since he’s been in their tub for a month.

Like the pool, Shinobu’s in a bikini and Lum’s in a one piece, but they’re different prints from the previous swimsuits they wore, which is a nice touch. Sakura also shows off her ability to eat massive quantities of food, but this time she’s with her fiancé Tsubame.

When Ataru tries to take the pool demon somewhere secluded, that happens to be the same spot where Sakura and Tsubame end up to be alone together. This results in Ataru, the pool demon, Mendou, Shinobu, and Lum all watching intently as the couple draw closer into a kiss that’s sadly broken up by the pool demon walking up to point-blank range to stare at them.

He apologizes to Ataru, Lum, Shinobu, and Mendou by throwing a goodbye picnic, offering food he’d procured/stolen from around the beach. Everyone eats, but they can’t be merry with the guy constantly bringing up the fact that they’re leaving him there all alone.

Throughout the background of this segment, there’s a very sweet and wholesome little vignette of a gentle little boy taking his beloved pet Pochi to the beach because he can’t keep it anymore. When all his most treasured moments with Pochi (who is never shown) flash before the boy’s eyes, he suddenly can’t go through with it anymore.

The boy races back to the beach, sees Ataru with a cardboard box, and snatches it up, thinking it’s the cardboard box containing Pochi that he left of the beach when it’s actually a second box into which Ataru put the pool demon.

Shinobu discovers the boy’s box, and opens it to reveal that “Pochi” is just Cherry. The kid had been spending all this time with (and feeding) Sakura’s uncle like he was a pet. That’s a great-ass punchline right there. No sooner do Ataru and Lum return home than they receive a postcard from the pool demon—who now goes by Pochi—saying he’s found a great new home and life with the kind boy. All’s well that ends well!

Urusei Yatsura – 06 – Earth, Lightning, Fire and Ice

Ataru is a man of simple pleasures. When it’s sukiyaki night at the Moroboshi house, he’s super-pumped. Unfortunately he’s never able to partake in the feast, as Lum grabs him and leaps through an inter-dimensional portal she made in his closet that leads to the Oni homeworld.

Lum is in battle gear, and soon so is Ataru. The lines are drawn between the Oni and the “Lucky Gods”. Ataru feels like some kind of bloody, horrific war is going to start, but the “battle” takes the form of…tower basket ball toss, an even not out of place on school sports days.

This is kinda boring to Ataru, until he spots a major babe in Benten, one of Lum’s old friends (Ishigami Shizuka). Back home, Ataru’s parents wait as long as they can, then eat all the sukiyaki, before hearing their son’s voice and freaking out. Cherry arrives to help them speak to their son, now allegedly dearly departed to the hereafter.

In reality, they can just hear him through the portal as he flirts with Benten. While she’s understandably “who is this guy” at first, once she realizes he’s Lum’s husband she decides to have a little fun at her expense and plays along. This results in Lum and Benten, the two basket minders, ignoring the game completely to fight over Ataru.

Before Cherry summons Ataru’s voice again, he has Ataru’s folks make more sukiyaki, at which point his mom has lost her patience and holds the tiny priest at knifepoint. He does the same nonsensical chanting as his niece Sakura, tuning into Ataru just as he’s facing his “punishment” as the weakest link on the losing team: being pelted with pellets by both sides.

As is typical of Urusei Yatsura, the next morning is a bit of a reset, but Ataru is in bed with a cold. Somewhat surprisingly, Shinobu is by his side tending to him, and Lum is nowhere to be found. Soon Mendou, Ataru’s friends, and Cherry are crowding the room, just as it starts to grow very cold and snowy.

Lum went to Neptune to visit a friend through the portal, so a bit of the icy world seems to be “leaking” into his room, including an avalanche’s worth of snow that buries Ataru. He’s dug up not by Shinobu or his friends, but by a new character who resembles a yuki-onna. She goes back through the portal and then down a deep chasm.

Starting with Ataru (who is pushed), everyone follows suit, and lands upside-down on the snow-packed surface of Neptune. There, Ataru reunites with Lum (in a smart tiger-print two-piece combo more appropriate for the climate than her usual bikini), who reveals the yuki-onna is her old friend Oyuki (Hayami Saori, of course).

Neptune is a world full of nothing but women, which makes it a paradise for Mendou, who is all to happy to dig snow for them endlessly. Meanwhile, Oyuki invites Ataru, Lum, Shinobu and Cherry into her futuristic mansion. Ataru can’t help but flirt with Oyuki, incurring the rage of both Shinobu and Lum (as well as Lum’s lightning).

Ataru begs to go somewhere where he’ll be safe from their wrath, praising Oyuki for being a pure, gentle, and above all non-violent maiden. However he soon finds that Oyuki, who ditched her outdoor robes for a revealing ice-blue one-piece, was planning to seduce Ataru all along. Things are about to get racy when the wall crumbles before them and B-Bo, Oyuki’s yeti attendant, takes exception to Ataru’s presence.

B-Bo chases Ataru through the Neptunian wastes and back through the portal to Earth, where news choppers capture the ensuing rooftop spectacle. Once the King Kong style incident is over, Ataru finds himself in a full body cast, tended to by both Shinobu and Lum, who hoped he learned his lesson about chasing every girl with a pulse. Of course, he didn’t learn, and will never learn—otherwise he wouldn’t be Moroboshi Ataru!

The third and final segment is the shortest, and takes place after the credits. At the end of the semester, Ataru has an announcement for everyone: he’s retiring. His teacher thinks this means he’s dropping out due to his upsettingly terrible grades, but it’s Mendou who shatters the fourth wall by assuming Ataru was retiring … as the main character of Urusei Yatsura.

Everyone goes along with this, because everyone wants to be his replacement. It results in a callback to every character large and small we’ve met so far in the first six episodes, each making their case. Finally Ataru has to disappoint them all: he’s not retiring from being the MC, but from the school presidency.

Urusei Yatsura – 02 – Ataru’s Girl

You would think that having an alien babe as a wife would be pretty sweet, but lest we forget, Moroboshi Ataru is a pathologically unlucky young feller, while Lum is either ignorant or uncaring of Earther concepts such as personal space, privacy, or not wanting to be electrocuted. Almost every waking moment involves Ataru fighting off Lum’s cuddling, getting daggers from every other girl in his life, and then getting shocked into near-oblivion.

The cold open does a very effective job portraying just how ridiculously stressful and intolerable the situation actually is, rather than it being a case of Ataru being sour despite clearly hitting the jackpot. This is legit not fun for him, so he runs away from home. But it’s not long before Lum, Shinobu, and his parents are on TV begging him to come home.

On his way out he meets Sakura (via accidentally copping a feel), a beautiful but sickly shrine maiden who immediately pegs him as the single most accurséd person she’s ever met. Sakura she invites him to her home/shrine for an exorcism, which her mom (who looks exactly like Cherry’s sister, because she is!) promises she’s very good at.

It certainly doesn’t start off good, as Sakura (Sawashiro Miyuki, clearly having a blast) enters sporting a canker sore the size of a golf ball, and then her chanting (much of it food ingredients and condiments) causes scores of tiny little demons to manifest and surround Ataru. But Sakura persists, and before long, all of the miasma in the room vanishes, and she finds herself feeling healthier than ever.

Ataru and his horrible fortune were no doubt the lure that drew them all out of Sakura, but since they all represent various maladies from which she suffered, she finishes the job and exorcises them, demonstrating that her mom wasn’t lying about her competence. That said, there’s an unexpected visit from the Grim Reaper, who seemingly comes for Ataru.

A distraught Shinobu, Lum, and his parents surround him on his apparent death bed…until a pretty nurse walks in and Ataru sits up in bed and chats her up. A moment ago they were praying for him to wake up, and now they wish he was dead all over again. Lum, one to hold a grudge, continually punishes him with electrocutions, from which there is no escape because she can fly and he can’t.

After witnessing just how bad Ataru has it, Cherry prepares a yelow ribbon for Ataru to tie around Lum’s horns. Once tied, only he can untie it, and Lum’s powers of flight and electricity are nullified. Ataru plays it off as giving her a new accessory so his wife can look her best, but when she leaps out the window and takes a tumble, he knows it really works.

The grounded Lum feels heavy and disoriented, so she grabs the first person she meets on the street—one of Ataru’s horny friends—to test her elecrocution power, only to find that’s not working either. When Shinobu catches her clinging to Ataru once more and hears about the ribbons, she charges Lum to try to get them off, but Ataru comes between her, so she takes the baked treats she made for him, kicks him in the face, and storms off.

That night, Lum wants to sleep together with Ataru, as she’s still out of sorts and wants to be close to her darling. Indeed, she wants to be by his side for life! Realizing the ribbon is a double-edged sword, he tries to remove it, but she won’t let him…until Cherry’s note is one of the things she throws at his interfering friends, and one of them reads it, revealing Ataru and Cherry conspired to ground and de-electrify Lum.

Lum proceeds to show that she doesn’t need her powers to kick Ataru’s ass, and when he removes the ribbons, she’s got a whole day of electricity stored up to discharge all at once. How this doesn’t stop Ataru’s heart or burn him to a crisp fifty times over I have no idea, but one thing’s for sure: it hurts like heck!

Ataru isn’t the typical rom-com protagonist you simply envy for lucking out on his situation. He’s a womanizing scumbag, sure, but factoring in how and swiftly and often he receives his just desserts for being said scumbag—and even for simply existing—he strikes the fine balance between loathsome and sympathetic. And he’s about to have company in the form of an ultra-rich parachuting pretty boy!

Oresuki – 12 – The Problem is Ongoing

A week after involving Hose, Cherry, and Tsukimi, the library has been saved. But while the more bustling atmosphere doesn’t bother Pansy, continuing to deal with Hose does. Joro hasn’t figured out a way to help her in this matter, so reaches out to Tampopo.

He’s learned through Asunaro that she’s in love with Hose, and thus worked hard to get Pansy a boyfriend so she’d be off the board. She’s too busy with baseball to visit the library after school, so advises Joro to ask Pansy out immediately.

Joro still isn’t emotionally equipped to do that, and so the problem lingers and becomes more complicated. We learn that Sun-chan’s exchange with Pansy last week was to ask her to be his girlfriend if his team made it to Koushien. In the library, when Joro asks to talk to Pansy she tells him she’s accepted Sun’s offer, to the shock of both Hose and Joro. She also tells Joro to stay away from her…”for a while.”

When Joro meets with Sun-chan, his best friend confirms what Pansy said, adding that he’s been a good best friend thus far, and now it’s Joro’s turn to return the favor and “do what he’s supposed to do.” Tsubaki overhears this and grasps the situation, but Joro is still lost in the weeds.

He stays away from the library, working at Tsubaki’s family’s restaurant, he still gets to interact with her, Himawari, Cosmos, Asunaro, and yes, even Sasanqua (who works up yet more courage to offer support to him, but just can’t quite help herself from going Full Tsundere whilst around him).

Joro rightly considers this to still be a pretty sweet deal, and resigns himself to a Pansy-less life. The thing is, Joro read Pansy wrong in this case, and the ever-reliable Tsubaki is there to set him straight. Pansy may have called him a useless nuisance, but she said that and agreed to Sun’s offer to protect him from getting caught up in her problem.

It’s Joro’s choice whether to get caught up, and the “for a while” (rather than “forever”) was a small SOS to invite Joro to choose to help her despite the trouble. And he does just that, strolling into the library as the arrogant jerk Pansy fell in love with in the first place, just as Hose asks her out in the even Sun’s team doesn’t make the cut.

As expected, the unflincingly loyal Cherry and Tsukimi run interference for Hose, but Joro powers through, and Pansy lets him speak. Joro devises a challenge to Hose, giving each girl one of the excess barrettes Tampopo acquired while trying to win his heart. The barrettes represent votes: the girls should give the barrette to the guy they think should be with Pansy.

Predictably, this backfires for Joro, and he’s the only one who didn’t see it coming. Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro give their barrettes to Hose, not Joro, and take the opportunity to profess their love for Joro. Since he gave them the choice, none of them are willing to be runner-up. Cherry and Tsukimi actually inspired them to strive for love and friendship.

Hose also rescinds his friendship with Joro, as he cannot be friends with anyone who would keep him from Pansy. That’s kind of false equivalence, however, as it’s Pansy who doesn’t want to be with Hose, and has made it pretty clear! If Pansy and Joro love each other and want to be a couple the two of them need to break some hearts, full stop.

Hose, Cosmos, Himawari, and Asunaro need to be rejected in no uncertain terms. Sadly, so does Sasanqua, while Joro and Pansy need to clearly define their relationship going forward as one of a boyfriend and girlfriend. There can be no more half-measures creating hope for the others.

Will they take those difficult steps in the series-concluding OVA? One can hope. Joro wants to “leave all rom-coms in the dust.” One surefire way for Oresuki to stand out from a crowd is to have an unambiguous final couple.

Dagashi Kashi – 12 (Fin)

Here it is: the last episode of the Winter for RABUJOI, ending it with, well, not a whimper, but not really a bang either. The show was clearly never interested in brining the candy shop succession plot to any kind of resolution, and so instead stuck to its usual formula of crafting a slice-of-life skit around particular brands or types of candies.

Specifically, Saya is momentarily freaked out by the possibility of having a yuri moment with Hotaru, who asks her about the “flavor of love”, but she’s only talking about a cherry candy with a poem on the package called Sakuranbo no Uta. Meanwhile, Koko and Tou have a very over-dramatic exchange about the proper use of fortune-telling Taberun Desu Hi candies.

The next skit is devoted to Morinaga Milk Caramels, with Hotaru sitting in the smoking section of Saya and Tou’s family cafe as a kind of acknowledgement that they used to be marketed to adults as a tobacco substitute.

Mind you, before she comes in Koko is worried about “tying down” Hotaru with his indecision about succeeding the store, which Saya incorrectly imagines to be bondage. But Hotaru leaves impressed that Koko fulfilled her expectations, talking about the caramel’s history and mentioning its many flavors, including coconut.

The final skit is notable for its visual beauty as well as the transformation of the weather from beginning to end. While running after Hotaru to talk to her about his concerns, it starts to rain hard, and the two end up sheletering at a bus stop. There, Hotaru tries to break open a tin of Sakumashiki Drops, but can’t get it open; Koko pries the top with a 10-yen-coin, amazing Hotaru.

Then he tries to put the peppermint flavor drop he gets back in the tin, which Hotaru stops him. He tries it, and it turns out to be much better than he thought, which is again what Hotaru wanted him to realize: one has to try new things to be surprised.

As for tying her down and keeping her from her own business, Hotaru tells him that’s simply not the case: she’s in Koko’s town not just because she wants to recruit his father and get him to succeed the shop, but because she enjoys hanging out there; that’s all. He’s been overthinking things, and like overthinking this show, that gets you nowhere.

Ore Monogatari!! – 23

Quite unexpectedly, we enter the penultimate episode of this lovely series with the most profound and troubling dilemma yet to face the lovely couple of Takeo and Yamato. The former has encouraged the latter to work part-time at her favorite patisserie, Les Cerises. In the process, he may have just handed his girlfriend over to a superior potential mate. At least, that’s the feeling he gets once he learns that the young, up-and-coming patissier, Ichinose, is on first-name basis with “Rinko.”

At first, Takeo is intent on being happy and supportive of Yamato as she pursues her passion; a craft she’s very good at but until now hasn’t gotten professional exposure to. It’s also a craft Takeo doesn’t share with her, and it isn’t even something he can talk with her that much about. Ichinose can, and he’s able to dazzle Yamato in ways Takeo can not: with his pastry expertise.

That lack of a shared passion (ignoring their passion for each other) combined with the ease with which Ichinose calls Yamato Rinko (and the difficulty Takeo has even thinking about doing the same) combine to create a profound inferiority in Takeo, as he watches things unfold from afar without fully understanding the full context…nor the fact that Yamato may not actually like Ichinose that way, despite her respect and admiration for his mad skillz.

While Takeo considers that Yamato could well be falling for Ichinose, Suna all but confirms Ichinose is falling for Yamato, judging from his careful analysis of Ichinose’s stare.

As abruptly as Ichinose enters the Ore Monogatari!! world, he’s still given a fair hearing and development all his own. He’s a talented fellow, but up to this point been a bit of a lone wolf lacking a certain…something that deprived his work of warmth and love. The more time he spends with Yamato, the more he comes to think of her as his muse.

So when Takeo comes by the shop and Ichinose learns he’s Yamato’s boyfriend, I can understand, considering his inexperience in dealing with such matters, why Ichinose is so curt and abrupt in running up to Takeo and demanding he break up with Yamato immediately, as he sees himself as the better fit. And Takeo understands too.

Takeo put Yamato in the position to meet someone who might be better for her, and he can’t dismiss that possibility out of hand. It’s pretty devastating how effectively and succinctly Ichinose wraps up Takeo and Yamato’s unlikely relationship, even if he’s oversimplifying and underestimating the depth of Yamato’s love for Takeo.

It’s not a coincidence that right after Takeo concedes that “there may be others who are better” for Yamato out there, that we cut to someone who’s been tossed around by the show as someone who may be better for him in Suna’s big sister Ai, who may even understand him more than Suna. Takeo’s greatest strength, throughout his life and the show, has been putting others before himself, to make those others happy.

This week we see why that’s a weakness, as he puts himself and Yamato in a pretty good position to destory everything they’ve built these last twenty-odd episodes. But again, that’s only if we take Takeo’s inferiority and Ichinose’s desires as the law of the land. While things are in a precarious position, we have yet to hear how Yamato—no, Rinko—feels about things. And I wouldn’t be surprised she has no intention of switching boyfriends.