Amaama to Inazuma Episode 6 Review

The food’s going to spoil

(This review contains spoilers!)

          Well, we’re halfway through the season, and while Amaama to Inazuma continues to be as sweet and relaxing as ever, there’s still a definite worry that the same structured plot over and over again will grow stale before Episode 12 is reached.

          This episode decides to mix things up a bit by finally giving us the proper introduction of Shinobu, Iida’s friend. As first impressions go, she’s kind of funny every once in a while, but more often than not she just feels like she’s there to fill the “annoying friend” trope.

          What was really good was the overarching theme of this episode. Tsumugi decides she wants to throw a party at Iida’s house and invite all her friends. Her father isn’t happy about this at first, but after a flashback where we get our first appearance of Tsumugi’s mother, he compromises to let them come over later.

          Unfortunately, the rest of the episode kind of falls flat on it’s face. For the first time ever in this series, I found Tsumugi annoying this week. She was way louder and more over the top than usual, and in turn she felt a lot more like what a writer thinks a kid sounds like as opposed to the real thing. This is too bad, because up until now they’d pretty much nailed Tsumugi’s character, awkward moments and all.

          Basically, aside from the all too brief flashback, this episode relaxed back into the “everything is perfect!” world that caused some of the earlier episodes to be so slow. Without a real problem or storyline to follow, I feel like I’m watching an anime version of the Food Network, and while that sounds fun on paper, in practice it’s really boring. That’s why Episode 3 worked so well: it blended the cooking segment with the story from the first half of the episode. Here, the story is resolved 8 minutes in, leaving us with just the cooking segment.

          Another problem was that, what with all the over exaggerated expressions and loud screamy voices, this almost felt like an episode of a completely different show. Amaama to Inazuma is usually a realistic slice of life show, but here, the characters reacting to things were so bananas that it wouldn’t feel out of place in Nichijou.

          It was cool to see new characters join in the cooking, but at this point, it’s all formulaic. They prepare the food, do something while they wait, some problem comes up, they fix it, they finish cooking and eat it, somebody cries, roll credits. How can I keep being excited for each new episode when I know it’s exactly the same thing I saw last week and the week before that? If something doesn’t change soon (and sadly, I doubt it will), I might lose interest and stop watching.

FINAL SCORE

4/10

Mediocre