Hard to to believe, but we’re down to three episodes left for Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu – four if you count the DVD episode that may or may not air on TV. And it seems like the staff is trying really hard to cram as much as they can into these 8 episodes – we’re getting at least one major holiday every week, seems like. One positive from this is they’re doing a fantastic job getting all the characters involved this season. Just when I was thing the Hopelessly in Love With Satou Squad was a little left out, they were prominently featured in the first sketch this week – a rather preposterous bit above Yoshioka’s claim that writing your beloved’s name on an eraser.
The downside of all this is that we’ve barely had any Yabe-chin all year, with the “Pathetic Christmas” scene in episode 2 being his only real shining moment. And this week it seemed as if we had hardly any Futaba or Hitoha. I like all the Marui trips including Mitsuba, but I like her best in short doses – she can be a bit much when carrying an entire episode as she did this week, and while the fat jokes were better they still get tired after a while.
On the whole there was nothing on the level of the brilliant hilarity that was last week’s finale at the water park, but this week’s funniest sketch was the finale too – a pretty inspired bit where the girls are getting their physical exams. Mitsuba is, naturally, terrified about her weight. Hitoha strives to trick Kuriyama-sensei into measuring her new topknot as part of her height by knocking her glasses onto her forehead. This inspires Mitsuba to try and get her weight read again with disastrous results – leading to the best line of the episode, Futaba’s “Mitsuba’s a Yokozuna!” Meanwhile, all this going on in the next room stirs Chiba into a frenzy, and he leads the boys into a ranking session of all the girls in class – most of which consists of deriding Shin-chan as a pretty-boy and wishing all the girls would occasionally shut up. Excellent stuff.
In other news, we had Hitoha breaking Miya-whatever-san’s heart by asking her to die when she meant to ask about her diet. We had Shin-chan eating Futaba’s chocolate off the ground (he so likes her) and Mitsuba thinking it’s dog crap. We had occult-girl falling in love with Sugisaki on the grounds that she thought she was dead and Sugisaki kissing cookies off her face (She’s a lez! Love takes many forms – her’s is just… different.) And we had Sugisaki’s mother visiting the class and continuing to be the weirdest and most disturbing character on the show, this time proving herself a “weird kid otaku”. Really, it’s remarkable how much comedy they’re fitting into every episode this season – it’s really a breakneck pace, but most of it is working so I’m not complaining. I just want as much Mitsudomoe as I can get…
