Hansaku Iroha 08 - Beta as...Lollipops

A nice out-of-context line. Yay~

I'll keep profanity out of the title. Ha-ha-ha-ha. It was the only way to describe this episode, as I watched Ko-chan fail miserably. This episode seemed too anti-climactic to warrant a two-episode span complete with a full minute-long recap. What were they thinking, anyway, with that recap?

Ohana X Tohru is surely going to happen.

So, after the brutal one minute recap of the last episode, Ohana finally found Tohru. She "claimed" that Ko-chan inspired her, but he was pretty much useless. They are really implying that the entire Ohana X Tohru really might happen. I mean, she is smelling his hair and he seems to be overly-friendly with her compared to everyone else. Way to go, Ohana, just steal Minchi's crush, like a true vixen.


What? Pearz was right? This wasn't a hard one to guess, based on the genre and such, though. It was quite clear that her efforts would pay off with another guest being the real mystery guest. I guess being able to guess things is proof that stuff is not just coming out of someone's ass. It's better than a nonsensical explanation, at least.


Onto our beta-as-fuck: Ko-chan. I guess that is why Ohana has the "-chan" suffix for his beta-as-fuck ways. He quite clearly does not deserve to get Ohana. I mean, you spend your entire day travelling just to go home; good job. I guess that was to be expected, since he couldn't even tell her that he was coming to visit. Seriously, what did you think would happen when you showed up randomly? That always goes well... You could even tell from the way Ohana talked to and about him. He's been forever friend-zoned, and he deserves it.


This anime is slowly letting me down more and more. I was expecting some drama, maybe even a bit of real interaction between Ko-chan and Ohana. I guess Ohana's life is just pretty boring and too "normal." They don't even throw in some drama with a rival hot spring and the forever friend zoned Ko-chan. Even stealing Minchi's crush would work, but the writers seemed to stray away from these points any time it came up. Are they saving these potential plot points for later? I just don't see how else they can create a climax for the ending of this anime. Granted, that is still far away (this is a 24-26 episode anime), but you usually want to at least insinuate a bit where it's headed near the start. It gives the viewers a reason to keep watching every week, rather than resolving everything every episode.


I guess what it comes down to is that this anime is too true to the slice-of-life genre. Anime of this genre these days has more drama and I have come to expect at least a bit of that. It just feels like it is lacking something right now. This is nothing like the drama-filled first episode, where everything moved quickly. Way to troll us all into watching after that amazing first episode...

~Pearz