Xebek\’s Blog

Its New Years time and Harima is forced to go around in a lion suit with Eri, as he stalks Karasuma and Tenma. We also see the various characters doing traditional New Years activities.

Summary:

• We see Youko (art teacher) and Itoko drag racing with some other car down twisty roads. They easily beat the other car and they just drive to the beach to have a picnic, watching the sunrise.
• We see Tenma and Harima both having New Years dreams, which by superstition is supposed to come true. Tenma dreams of getting together with Karasuma and Harima dreams of getting together with Tenma. They both head to the temple to do New Years things.
• At the temple Harima sees Tenma who has met up with Karasuma and walks with him. He is fuming in anger and Mikoto sees him and asks him if he can do her a favor as they need some people to work the celebration, reminding him of how she helped him.
• He ends up having to be in a lion suit with someone else and dance around. He goes in the suit and find Eri there, much to both of their surprise. Eri however sees how the little kids are looking forward to the Lion dance so she does it with him.
• They dance around and after some events where Harima swallows Imadori and gets attacked by Lala; he ends up stalking Tenma and Karasuma who leave the temple area. He sees Karasuma about to do what he thinks is kiss her so he charges him but falls off a cliff and she just ends up giving her a present.
• We see everyone flying kites. Itoko asks Harima to do something for her and Akira coaxes Hanai into doing something. We see the two of them ending up being tied to kites and being flown. The two of them then fight each other on the kites, fighting in the sky. However when Hanai tires to do a special move the string breaks and he flies into the distance.
• We see everyone doing different New Years activities. In one, Eri and Yakumo play a game and since Eri looses Yakumo gets to paint on her face but she uses Harima as a substitute sense he caused them to fall down a cliff. Yakumo just paints a mustache and beard on him, making him look like he used to.

Impressions:

This episode was hilarious, defiantly one of my favorites. I’m glad they got away from the whole parody thing they did last couple episodes. Not that I don’t like when they do the parodies or anything, but I think its better when the show focuses on the main characters as it is funnier I think.

I thought Eri and Harima having to do the lion thing together was great, even though it was rather predictable it was still funny I thought. They seem to be forced to be together like that a lot but it isn’t necessarily getting less funny. I really like Eri and her and Harima is probably my favorite pairing, although not necessarily the one I think is going to happen. Because of that I like seeing the two of them together and even if they don’t’ make up a pair that ends up together semi permanently or whatever they still have good chemistry together.

Some other specific things that were great in this episode was Harima eating Imadori. How he was normally supposed to just bit him but he basically swallowed all of him. Ichijou’s reaction to that and just the randomness of it was hilarious I thought. I also loved the kite duel given Hanai and Harima’s rivalry.

On a small note, the kite duel thing reminded me again of how awesome of a character Akira is. I just love how she is so manipulative and can basically get anyone to do whatever she wants because she knows their secrets and knows if she phrases something right the person will just basically volunteer. Like how she got Hanai to do the kite thing by [playing at his rivalry with the other class.