The biggest tragedy of the winter season is the best comedy – namely, that Mitsudomoe is only running 8 episodes. There hasn’t been an anime this consistently hilarious since the first season of Minami-ke – and this one has managed to carry that over into a second season without missing a beat.

This episode certainly had the toilet humor which hasn’t always been a strength of this show – it can go for just plain crude instead of smart at its worst. But it worked this week, both in the context of the spoiled oranges on New Year’s Eve and the yellow snow. It’s certainly true that despite her brash exterior, Mitsuba is a classic schlemazel – bad things just seem to find her. But as so often is the case, she’s just enough of a jerk to get herself into trouble – in this case stuck in a bathroom window after trying to hog the bathroom in case a second bout of diarrhea hit (it sounds worse than it actually plays on screen). As for that snow, it’s all courtesy of Chiba – though again it’s Mitsuba who causes most of the problems by being too dense to figure out why the snow is that color. Chiba’s misdirection – claiming Satou peed in the same snow – was rather brilliant.

The accelerated schedule this season has quite literally meant a holiday every week – and this time we get two for the price of one. It’s Valentine’s Day – again! – and this premise leads to some wonderful interaction between Shinya and Soujirou. If you remember, Soujirou was a hottie when he was Shin-chan’s age – and this series never forgets a detail, no matter how small. So Sourjirou is sympathetic to Shin-chan’s plight at being tormented by the Hopelessly in Love With Satou Squad. Of course, he’s also horrified that anyone would be a love interest of his precious daughter – though he needn’t have worried, as that chocolate heart he found in the fridge was actually a gift from Hitoha to Nipples. The best part about the sketch, though, is the vision the HiLWSS has when they think Soujirou is a pedo who’s kidnapped Shinya – and the fact that they find the concept rather arousing. As usual, Mitsudomoe is totally fearless.

There’s rather a lot of Soujirou this week, and as usual that’s a good thing. He’s part of a parent teacher conference that’s pure genius, featuring the parents we know – Soujirou, Sugisaki’s mom, Shinya’s mom – and cameos from some delightful first-timers including the Yoshioka parents and Chiba’s mother. The subtle way these parents reflect their kids is really genius, but the driver of the sketch is Satou-san’s worry about her son having a stalker after he confides to her that his slippers and textbooks are being licked (ewww). This starts a raucous and hilarious kerfuffle amongst the parents and Yabe-chin, who eventually – much to Shin-chan’s dismay – mans up and promises to deal with the situation and avoids police involvement.

Finally, We get yet another holiday, April Fool’s, which has Hitoha in a state of rampant paranoia about her siblings – and Yabe-chin – playing tricks on her. Seeing Hitoha in one of her panic states is always amusing, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her as she walked into a telephone pole and ended up unconscious in bed at home, with Yabe-chin and the other triplets persuading her she’d been asleep two days and it was really April 2nd. If it was nothing else, this skit would have been worthwhile just to set up Mitsuba’s great closer – “You’ve been tricked by a virgin!”