Summary:

Souta is outraged at being attacked out of the blue and that the restaurant can tolerate an employee who cannot work with the male staff and refuses to serve male customers; he calls her out on only doing half a person’s work (at full pay). In spite of, or rather precisely because of, how he has gotten under her skin, Mahiru asks to work on the same shifts as Souta who then suffers repeated battering.

Mahiru becomes even more upset with Souta when he tells her off for getting his surname wrong but then is all happy bubbles when Poplar, who confused her in the first place, makes her usual mistake while addressing him. Poplar wonders if Mahiru taking offence at the double standard is due to her liking Souta. There’s some back and forth as each tries to praise the other but end up needling each other’s sore spots instead before Mahiru tells Poplar she hates Souta.

Meanwhile Kyouko is getting an infatuated Yachiyo to make her parfaits and to do her manager’s work, like coming up with the monthly objective. When Souta points out that Kyouko will never be able to achieve the target of working under the gaze of the customer, Yachiyo amends it to: Let’s work under the gaze of the manager! Poplar tries to get Souta and Mahiru to just get along and persuades the former to praise the latter. Souta reluctantly manages to blurt out that her hairpin is cute and gets socked again for his pains. But Mahiru then tells Poplar she attacked Souta because she was surprised and surprisingly pleased with his compliment.

Reaction:

I am disappoint at the insufficiency of Poplar cuteness but I was surprised at how wholeheartedly I was supporting Souta, pumping my fist when, after another unprovoked assault, he told Mahiru how she was only a worker of half a person but with the violence of ten. With him stoically soaking up punishment without retaliation but also not hesitating to give his tormentress a piece of his mind, Souta is definitely not your average wimpy anime male.

And now that Mahiru is doki doki over Souta, the punching may get even worse. But hopefully there won’t be too much more of her after getting this Mahiru-centric episode out of the way.  Given how I believe Louise Is Evil And Must Be Destroyed, many merry laughs were had when Mahiru self-destructed after telling Poplar how, despite being a midget, she had glorious breasts that were so much larger than hers. It’s indisputable – even Shins everywhere agree.

Of course I was infinitely cheered up by Yachiyo’s flowery admiration of Kyouko; this will never develop into hawt yuri of course but I look forward to the doujins where passionate embraces and more will be had between the two in Wagnaria’s storerooms hoohah.

P.S. Needs more Poplar cuteness.

What Others Are Saying:

• Aroduc slams this episode for the implausibility of Mahiru still remaining employed in spite of her violent androphobia and then lays on some more wrt the repetitiveness of the jokes.
• 21stcenturydigitalboy, a fan of the source manga, is bitterly disappointed with the anime and appears to have dropped it. [Perhaps he may come back now that Episode 3 seems to deliver on the Yachiyo hard gay for Kyouko.]
• Raph notes that the humour is a combination of physical comedy and sharp contrasts in situations/chara behaviour; expresses reservations that its over-the-top zaniness can be offputting.
• Josh’s observation about how Souta’s quirk is the most disturbing one of the cast got me thinking about how many anime are premised on thrusting an ordinary person into an extraordinary situation… but thereafter the ordinary person is revealed (often to her or himself) to be not so ordinary afterall. Will we get a reversal wrt Souta?

Related posts:

1. Working!! 12
2. Working!! 11
3. Working!! 05