Zyl on April 29, 2010 · in Working!! Season 1

Summary:

Yachiyo arrives for work and discovers a drunk woman who has passed out at the rear exit. Souta tries to hide that Kozue is his third elder sister but is discovered by Mahiru who is also shown an embarrassing childhood photo. Hiroumi also learns of this and obtains the photo whereupon he blackmails Souta into doing his work after subjecting Poplar and Yachiyo to similar treatment. His busybody attempt to get Yachiyo to notice Jun’s feelings for her misfires disastrously when the former thinks the latter likes Kyouko. Hiroumi later meets his match at the business end of Jun’s frying pan.

Souta sees Poplar helping Mahiru with her math and volunteers his help, as payment for her silence about the photo, with her classic literature; both teachers at her all-girls school are male so she could not concentrate on anything other than restraining herself from attacking them.  With his father deceased and his mother absent a lot,  Souta is often at the mercy of his elder sisters – book-bashing lawyer Kazue, gloomy goth writer Izumi and self defence instructor Kozue. Even though elementary schooler Nazuna is sweet to him, he fears that the fast growing youngest sister will eventually turn out to be like the others. No wonder he is all hail Poplar!

At work, Souta learns that Hiroumi’s KGB tricks do not work on Mahiru; she attacks him before he can start a conversation and he doesn’t know much about her. Except that she changed her hair pin daily after Souta praised her once. She overhears this and Hiroumi is pounded repeatedly. Later, for Valentine’s Day, Poplar helps Mahiru present Souta with their joint chocolate gift and he gets punched in the nose due to Mahiru’s embarrassment rather than her androphobia. After the credits, Poplar wonders why Jun has two chocolate gifts; Yachiyo had given one each to Jun and Hiroumi and the latter had tricked the former into taking twice the burden of obligation to return chocolate on White Day.

Reaction:

So that’s why Souta is a minicon! Even though his reasoning is deeply flawed (all swans are white…), I can at least understand why he feels the way he does about Poplar. It was also quite cute that he still has the bunny doll we saw in the photo. And I am also very pleased with the profusion of Poplar cuteness, especially without resorting to taunts about her size, such as her fake tutoring glasses and her enthusiasm in helping Mahiru with V-Day chocolates.

Mahiru’s display of all the usual tsundere tropes, such as denying the blatantly obvious, was cute but her struggle with her man-fear adds an extra dimension that makes her even cuter. Certainly I’m happy to see that her character has grown to the point that she can tolerate Souta’s presence to the point that he can teach her classics while sitting next to her. I also really felt for Jun. He is a real man for patiently listening to the girl he likes natter on endlessly about someone else she has the hots for; big points also for being able to calmly stare Yachiyo down despite being threatened with a katana while being emotionally stabbed by her obliviousness to his feelings. Though an innocent cherry tomato got hurt (Hiroumi deserved what he got).

I was worried last week that Hiroumi’s story, on its own, would not be able to sustain a whole episode but the anime has really come together in this episode. His blackmail (what other secrets does he have re: Yachiyo!?) was the perfect vehicle to meld everyone and their individual quirks into a single large narrative but the way it eventually blewback on him was also comedy gold and great justice.

What Others Are Saying:

• Some immediate impressions on Twitter, especially regarding Mahiru,were favourable too. Divine‘s personal highlight was also her beatdown of Hiroumi. Verily us anibloggers are companions of justice!
• I have learnt a new term from Kurogane, i.e. bou(ryoku)dere [violence upgrade on tsun], and was LOLOL at his pithy description of how “Inami’s crush on Takanashi just grows bigger and bigger and claiming more victims now.”