Aw. Minoa sad makes me sad…

Anime Gataris
Studio: Wao World
Genre: Comedy, School

This episode was a bit of a return to form from the last one. It focuses on yet another club trip, but this time the majority of it wasn’t in a line. The usual conversations between the characters return, and the charm of the cast is once again at the forefront. The crux of the episode is the members going on a ‘pilgrimage’ to various anime meccas around Japan (explained to us in amusing meta fashion), then stopping off at a hot spring hotel. But that’s really more of a subplot, as you would expect with these colorful characters. So what is the actual plot?

There are two, really. The A-story of the episode revolves around Minoa’s experience with this little trip, which isn’t exactly stellar. She’s just having a string of bad luck, so she winds up getting pretty down on herself, which is honestly a pretty relatable thing. She’s new to this, so there’s still that factor of being an outsider looming over her. It’s easy to feel like you’re dragging everyone else down in that kind of situation. Especially given the luck she’d been having up to that point.

The B-story is more comedic in nature, and centers around Kai’s trying to piece together the feelings of one of the girls. Let alone his own feelings towards her. The payoff is… different, all right. It actually follows up on a joke they’d made earlier in the series that I expected to be a one-off. Nice. It makes up for the arc being fairly uninspired, otherwise. That and the show does have its way of executing very ‘standard’ elements in entertaining ways. Seeing Kai trying to apply his anime knowledge to the situation was amusing, for example. We’re getting quite a few anime lately that manage to sort of play with what you’d expect of typical romantic plots and subplots.

The episode maintains the heart that’s been present throughout the series and is punctuated with a climax that’s honestly hilarious. Minoa gets lost and when the others split up to find her, shenanigans ensue. And they were wonderful shenanigans indeed. I also don’t know how many more times I can point out that Sebas is the funniest thing about the show. I generally just look forward to whenever Alice snaps her fingers.

If I have any real concerns, it’s that the show should probably start building to its endgame soon. These past two episodes more or less kept things self-contained. But after the tease at the end of the problems with the student council, I want to know what’s next for these guys. I’m perfectly fine with a series like this not having a dedicated plot. Not so much with them teasing one and then not following through with it. We’ve got plenty of time, of course, and I do like that there isn’t a ton of plot. Otherwise, it’d distract from the club itself. But things should probably start to get going again soon.

“Oh yeah. We did have a plot, didn’t we.”

That said, this episode was fairly entertaining throughout and I find it difficult to really say much about it on a deeper level. It manages to be consistently entertaining, even if only in parts, so I’ll be consistent as well and continue to Recommend it. Even if things don’t pick up and the series stays more or less on this exact level throughout the remaining episodes, I don’t anticipate the show dropped any lower than maybe Junk Food level, which is still pretty good. But if you think you’re done with this series, we have plenty of reviews and recaps of other shows, this season. Why not give those a whirl?

Anime Gataris Simulcasts on Crunchyroll, Sundays at 10:00am EDT.