All those dignitaries who’ve been arguing endlessly for the last two weeks in Durban are missing the boat when it comes to fighting global warming – they just needed to bring in Harris, Clark and Martin.

For most of the first sketch, I was thinking that it must be a miracle that Takeru isn’t starving to death, because for the better part of the sketch his sisters and his squid-sister fought and finagled with each other for every scrap of meat that the ultra-carnivorous Chizuru had bought for their Korean BBQ night , without a thought for him.  It should certainly come as no surprise that Chizuru is a terrifying predator when it comes to packaged beef – it suits her personality – but while every trick Eiko tried to slow Chizuru and Ika down missed the mark, and Eiko ended up stuffing herself with chicken.  But it was Takeru’s last laugh as the tortoise beat the hare – by the time Chizuru brought out the precious wagyu beef slices, everyone else was so bloated that all that delicious prime steak was left for him.  We also got our first delicious squid ink gag of the season.

It was nice to see Goro again – he and Nagisa (she’ll be back next week, along with a new scary giant Ika head) have been somewhat underutilized this season.  The occasion this time was shy Ayumi’s desire to learn self-defense.  I think she had the right idea to ask Eiko, because surely anyone could see that giving license to Chizuru to beat someone up is a really bad idea – but Eiko punted the ball to her and she was only too happy to comply.  Of course Eiko and Ika were smart enough not to play the attacker themselves, and that left poor Goro to “volunteer”.  But you know, even though he ended up in the hospital I suspect Goro would gladly have chosen to submit himself to Chizuru’s tender mercies anyway – it’s the only attention he gets from her, and at least she stuck around to peel his apples for him in his hospital room.  But did she really need to rack him?

Finally, the funniest sketch of the night brought in the Three Stooges with yet another hare-brained idea.  When they suggest their new self-powered A/C unit to cool off Lemon on a brutally hot day, things (uncharacteristically) seem to be working out just fine.  But trouble brews when they decide they need to do something to let everyone on the beach know – if there’s anything I’ve learned with Harris, Clark and Martin is that if they haven’t totally screwed things up yet, quit while you’re ahead.  Instead they helpfully bring out their portable snowstorm unit, which proceeds to turn the surrounding beach into a whiteout zone.  Takeru skillfully uses guilt and flattery to manipulate Ika into building a snowman, which quickly evolves into building an igloo, which quickly evolves into a bit steaming pot of nabe for everybody and Cindy showing up in a totally inappropriate bikini.  Unfortunately everyone is left to fight for survival as the snowstorm machine goes out of control, but The Stooges come to the rescue with an emergency heating function on their A/C unit – which quickly goes out of control itself due to a dead battery.  Thankfully all is well when the snowstorm generator flies off to Okinawa to turn that tropical island into a winter wonderland, only to show up again in the ED.

Hard to believe we’re down to just two episodes left – while this season hasn’t been as consistently hilarious as the first, it’s really flown by.  The good thing is that even with two seasons in the books, there’s plenty of manga left – Shinryaku! Ika Musume is already over 190 chapters, and the two seasons combined will have only used about 75 of them.  And there’s some killer material left, too – the soccer chapter “Isn’t it a Yellow Card?” and one of my favorites, “Aren’t You Siblings?” spring immediately to mind.  Let’s hope the BD/DVD and merch sales are strong enough to convince Diomedea to give us another season – with the manga still going, there’s certainly lots of incentive for cross-promotion.  As Diomedea is a relatively small studio and this is its flagship property, I think the chances are pretty good.

“Winter” ED: