Horimiya: Piece – 08 – There’s Something About Yanagi

Last week contained the most significant Yanagi Akane screen time since the first season, and he was never the most present of the nine principal characters. That changes this week as it’s all Yanagi, all the time. In the cold open, Tooru finds his lost contact on the floor.

Remi and Kyouko put on a whole song and dance as cover for the fact they simply don’t want Yanagi to wait for a late bus alone in the cold. While Ryouko has Izumi, Remi has Sengoku, etc., Yanagi seems to be the one whom everyone likes, and belongs to everyone. So everyone wants to go out of their way to be kind to him.

When his teacher warns Yanagi’s class that future tardiness will be punished, he gets anxious, because he is simply rubbish at getting up in the morning. When he tries to go to bed earlier he just wakes up at odd hours. He has two alarm clocks, but one always seems to be broken.

Sengoku, Izumi, Ryouko and Tooru hear his story, put their heads together, and come up with an ironclad solution to get him up on time: Izumi and Tooru will call him, and Sengoku will text him (though that bit is just because everyone thinks Sengoku’s texts are unintentionally hilarious).

The next morning, Yanagi’s alarm goes off, but he holds it upside town and thinks it’s only 1:30 rather than 7:00. When Izumi calls, Yanagi refuses to wake up, but after Tooru calls and Sengoku texts, he can’t help but get up. He thanks them for their help, but assures them he can get up on his own tomorrow. Alas, his one remaining alarm clock is busted!

The final segment of this episode of Piece involves Sengoku being self-conscious about Yanagi speaking to him so formally, and as Yanagi explains it, he only speaks casually to people he wants to be good friends with. Sengoku takes this to believe Yanagi doesn’t want to be good friends.

Tooru assures him that’s not the case; Yanagi is initially formal with everyone, including him, so Sengoku shouldn’t despair. Sure enough, when their vending machine mixup is reversed, Yanagi buys Sengoku a drink more to his taste, and is a little more casual with him this time.

Still, Sengoku is a little envious of some of his friends being closer with Yanagi than him. Call it a bro-crush if you must! He notes that Shuu and Yuki, the biggest “airheads” of the group, seem to be the ones Yanagi gets along with best, but doubts he could ever bump into a wall, apologize to that wall and glare at it.

Tooru tries to show him how to simply be spontaneous by walking up to Yanagi and tickling him, but when Sengoku practices with Tooru as Yanagi, it doesn’t go well. To Tooru it felt like being molested. Izumi overhears this and confuses the issue further.

That’s when Yanagi defends Sengoku’s honor and says he’d never molest anyone. In the end, Sengoku doesn’t have to worry about how close he is to Yanagi, because from Yanagi’s perspective they’re plenty close already.

P.S. I never skip the Horimiya: Piece ED. It’s one of the best of the summer and it’s genuinely moving every time. It’s a sweet mélange of moments of young love, friendship, and bittersweet yearning that perfectly captures the gentle kindness of the cast.

Urusei Yatsura – 21 – Urusei Babies

This week we get a flashback to when Lum, Benten, Oyuki and Ran were being oppressed by their teacher when they were little tykes. Only their school is in space, their teacher is a robot, and they’re doing most of the oppressing with increasingly violent pranks. As a fan of Muppet Babies, it was great to see these characters as rugrats but still fundamentally themselves, and the all-star voice cast nails their younger versions, as you’d expect.

We also get a good idea about the group dynamics at this early stage in the four “friends'” lives: Benten is the aggressive ringleader, Lum enthusiastically goes along with her mischief, Oyuki doesn’t stop them but merely observes and keeps her hands clean, and Ran always tries and fails to stop them, and always faces the same consequences they do. We already see her fury-ridden alter-ego being forged.

In the present, the four girls are concerned when Oyuki reports that Planet Urchin is being redeveloped, because that’s where they left CAO-2-sensei—stuck and trapped alone on one of those spikes for the better part of a decade. Luckily for them, once he’s free all he desires to to clap them with chalk dust one last time before going on his way. That clapping does involve destroying the wall of their café, but this show rarely dwells on property damage.

The second segment is a little less inventive due to the return to earth (I love it when we’re out in space, and the alien and school designs are weirder), involving Ryouko deciding to make a voodoo doll of her brother …because she’s bored? When he realizes what she’s done he pulls his katana on her, which does him no favors.

Ryouko cannot resist the temptation to do horrible things to the Mendou doll (and thus Mendou himself), so she leaves it in the care of someone she believes she can trust to keep it safe: Ataru. Ataru wears it around his neck at all times because Ryouko asked him, but this is not great for Mendou, as Ataru takes a lot of punishment throughout an average day, and he feels everything Ataru feels.

Initially, Mendou acts to everyone like he’s suddenly being a stand-up guy dedicated to keeping his friends Ataru safe. But then he confirms that Ataru has the doll of him, and that makes Ataru aware of what the doll can do to Mendou. Mendou in turn, makes a doll of Ataru, and the two spar in the most pointless battle imaginable, in which they each dole out the exact same amount of harm to one another with every attack.