Woof – that was a bit of a yawner…

As I’ve mentioned before, anytime you have an ensemble comedy like this you’re going to have some fluctuations, because some characters will be much better than others.  And when the others dominate the spotlight you’re going to have a weak episode.  Well, the others dominated this episode almost entirely, and the episode was predictably the weakest of the series so far.

These three characters – Kanade, Hikari and Shiori – are probably the least interesting of the nine siblings.  Kanade is at least capable of being semi-interesting when she’s dealing with Shuu (for obvious reasons), but in the first chapter’s dynamic it was really just the classic tsundere and the classic lolimouto, with a weak anime cold and overprotective father plot.  Shamefully moe pandering and quite stunningly boring, really.

The B-part, focused on Hikari’s idol career, was marginally better but still probably the second-weakest chapter we’ve seen.  Pretty stock stuff, really, with another wholly unconvincing plot surrounding the established star at Hikari’s agency.  The only thing that lifted this mediocrity above the earlier one was the fact that Hikari’s inexplicably (to those not in the know) grade-school denseness and genki was occasionally amusing.

Best we put this behind us, and the sooner the better.