Holy mackerel!

I think it’s inevitable that a series that goes for volume laughs the way Osomatsu-san does is going to have some ups and downs, and for me this episode was a bit of a valley.  There have been mostly peaks so far so the occasional letdown isn’t remotely close to a deal-breaker, and it’s not as if I didn’t laugh several times even so – just not, perhaps, as much I did for most of the first seven episodes.

There was some funny elements in the first number of the evening, which featured the eldest brother as “The Calming Detective Osomatsu-kun“.  The issue for me is that it was basically one joke carrying a ten-minute sketch,  I did enjoy the Jason Vorhees avatar in the background while the incompetent cops flailed away looking for clues – and the fact that he didn’t actually turn out to be the killer.  And Totty as the exasperated voice of reason – no one does that like Miyu-Miyu.  And why paella, of all things?

The next sketch was a bit funnier, featuring the return of Totoko as a wannabe idol.  Really, the two best things going here were Totoko’s frantic self-pity turning and and off like a faucet, and Iyami (I think he and Todomastu have emerged as my two favorite characters) getting more and more turned off by the sheer stupidity of the whole exercise.  And of course, the fact that it takes the entire skit for someone to realize that the whole fish thing makes absolutely no sense to begin with, and the “two sizes larger” sight gag.  It wasn’t genius-level Osomatsu-san, but it was pretty funny.

I would be lax in not mentioning the post-credits sequence (you always want to stay for that with this show).  I’m not complaining because we get an very clever reworked ED every as is, but Karamatsu and Jyuushimatsu’s “Sextuplets” number might be my favorite part of the episode.  It’s no coincidence that this series reminds one a lot of a nastier Shirokuma Cafe – almost all of the major cast cross over, and they’re both Studio Pierrot – and that was a very Shirokuma moment (right up until Karamatsu fell off the roof).