Xebek’s Blog

It’s summer vacation and as Sunao is out in the town she runs into Nagomi from the Student Council. As Nagomi watches Sunao perform a solo play, we learn more about her past.

Summary:

• We see after an Iron Chef dream of Sunao’s, Nagomi in the city talking about how she is at ease with the noise and so on. She sees Sunao and Shizuka walking together in the city, talking about some solo play they just saw. Sunao talks of how much she loved it with all the emotions and so on.
• Nagomi heads off somewhere and runs into the bald guys from the motorcycle gang. After bumping into them they challenge her to a fight and Sunao arrives pretending to be Otome, using light behind her to make a silhouette and talking like her. She scares them off and even though Nagomi says she didn’t need her help, eventually thanks her.
• When Nagomi returns home, after seeing that her mother has eaten with someone already she kind of freaks out, pushing the dishes to the ground.
• The next day we see Sunao buying a play book so she can practice for her own solo play. She runs into Leo and gets all mad at seeing him, remembering back to when they were little and Leo was the one who gave her the confidence to perform in the first place.
• We see Nagomi leaving her house, apparently still mad. We see her mother and what apparently is her mom’s boyfriend or Nagomi’s stepfather. She seems mad at him; they apparently don’t have a good relationship. As Nagomi is in the city alone she flashes back to her father, not the man we just saw, talking to her while cooking, making delicious food for her. She says to herself she isn’t a kid anymore.
• As Nagomi continues to walk around, she hears Sunao and investigates, finding her practicing by herself for her solo play. She watches her and Sunao gets embarrassed. She says how when she is ready it will be full of emotion and so on, and Nagomi says she believes her. After talking a bit more she heads home.
• The next day Nagomi is walking around and we flashback to her father some more. We find out how he makes a lot of food and Nagomi asked why he said to make others happy. She says how she wants to become a chef like him. Nagomi thinks to herself ho that dream isn’t obtainable anymore. She flashes back to when she found out of her fathers death.
• Nagomi finds Sunao again and watches her play. The play closely resembles her past, as it deals with the actress looking for her father who isn’t there anymore, and saying she isn’t a kid. Nagomi starts crying and Sunao sees this and they talk. They talk about dreams and Nagomi eventually gets the confidence to pursuer her dream, hearing Sunao say the reason she does plays is to make people happy, what her father said except for the play part.
• The next morning she makes breakfast for her mother and goes to see Sunao perform her play for Shizuka. She then gives them a full lunch and they exclaim how delicious it is, making Nagomi happy.

Impressions:

First off, I LOVED the whole Iron Chef parody dream Sunao had in the beginning. Being a fan of iron chef I thought it was hilarious that they put that in for her dream. So far every episode has started out with a dream of hers and so I hope they do more parody things like this for them.

Overall I was extremely pleasantly surprised by this episode. I loved how they focused on Nagomi. From what they showed she really had a rather interesting back story and so far just from what they’ve showed her personality and whole history was amazing. She is defiantly so far my favorite character in this show, in all seriousness, not including the characters I like because of their randomness. I like Nagomi’s character because of her back story and character which I thought this episode showed amazingly.

So far this series doesn’t seem to be centered much on romance, which still has me a bit surprised. I believe that the game this was based off of, Leo was the main character and since that would make it a harm show it was romance centered with the different girls. However the main character in this series which so far would defiantly be Sunao, kind of breaks the whole romance aspect I think because not only is it more comedy centered, the girl is the main character and there is only one guy. Either she will wind up with him or the focus will have to shift quite a bit to get a good romance plot in involving Leo and a different girl.

Another small note, I loved how they kept bringing back the whole daikon thing to torment Sunao. Not just in the dream in the beginning, but in the end they didn’t have to really stretch anything out or anything to get its appearance.