In some ways (and maybe this is because sports anime are so prevalent this season) Hoozuki no Reitetsu puts me in mind of a team with an impossibly deep bench.  There are more really strong comic characters in this series than just about any I can remember.  And while that’s obviously a strength, it can also be a challenge.  Just as it’s sometimes easier for an NBA coach to have a rotation of 8 or 9 players than one whose team is 12-deep, because there’s not enough playing time for all of them in the latter case.

That means you never know who you’re going to get in any given episode of Hoozuki, and you may not see some of your favorites as often as you’d like (for me, that would be Enma-sama – he seems less involved ever since S2 began).  But there are definitely regular “rotation players” – like Nasubi and Karauri and Momotaro’s animal trio in the premiere.  This time around it’s the irreplaceable Peach Maki and the Zashiki Warashi twins – who get their moment this week.  Not to mention Hakutaku, who, if you didn’t know this series, any trip to Comiket would convince you was a co-main character.

For Peach Maki, she catches her big break when a famous director (who I swear we’ve seen before but again – so many characters) offers her a part as a mahou shoujo.  Peach freaks out a little at this, as she (rightfully) considers herself a bit long in the tooth for that sort of role (when she finds out the real nature of it, she’s even more depressed) and Hoozuki (who’s hired the director to create a film about goldfish breeding) asks the long-forgotten Lilith to send around a witch to talk to.  This turns out to be Marin, a “dojikko” (though Hoozuki seems to think it’s a matter of being elderly) witch who lives in a gingerbread house and whose close friend was burned to death by Gretel.

All of this eventually leads to a trip to the mundane world – Marin wants to do some sightseeing at pharmacies (she starts with the eponymous Matsumoto Kiyoshi), where the tour group meets up with Hakutaku and Momotaro, on a sales trip.  This quickly turns into a referendum on Hakutaku’s fashion sense (fashion is a theme of the week), which is indeed surprisingly dasai for someone as slick with the chicks as he is.  Hakutaku ends up in a fashion throwdown with Marin, which he’s pretty much losing before the almost-forgotten pharmacist puts them both to shame with his “Chinese Angels” t-shirt.

Then it’s the Zashiki Warashi’s turn to step onto the runway.  If you paid attention to the OP you had a sense of where this was going – they see a Jigoku TV feature about how cute Western clothes are sweeping kids fashion in the human world.  Kids being kids, though want to try something on for size – they’re tired of looking like Japanese Hina dolls.  Hoozuki-sama being effectively their father at this point decides to do that shopping, with predictably disastrous results (he, of course, wants to turn it into a lesson – “what happens when you let a man pick your clothes”).

There’s some hemming and hawing about who should be the one to try next – Okou perhaps, or Karauri (who just picks the “top and bottom” sets out of magazines).  Nasubi’s suggestion that they use the monitor to RT check out kids fashions seems a good idea, and Disneyland is quickly pulled up – but that reveals little more than an undercover “business” trip by three of Hell’s chiefs of staff.  Finally it’s the aforementioned Lilith  (we haven’t seen her since the first season, I believe) who seems like the ideal solution, but her answer is altogether too French.  I’m guessing a doll’s kimono never sounded so good to the Zashiki Warashi twins…