Well, that wasn’t much of an ending…

Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou continues to surprise me.  Not least in how it just keeps going and going, like some kind of perpetual motion machine – I was surprised as hell when I found out it was going to be two cours.  And now, I was absolutely sure this was the final episode – it never even occurred to me that there would be a 26th (how many two-cours actually run 26 episodes anymore, like the old days?).  But here we are, with another week in the hopper to wrap things up.

It’s always a nice surprise when you get to what you think is the end of a series, only to find out it’s not – a series you like, anyway.  And I do like this one, though it rarely knocks my socks off – I appreciate how idiosyncratic it is, especially for a light novel adaptation.  What I thought was the final arc was a culture festival one, which is certainly a staple of anime tradition.  And while Youkai Apato didn’t break the mold in any radical way, it handled the trope with its characteristic ease and slightly quirky sensibility.

Basically, this was an exercise in the eccentrics of Kotobuki-so getting to go nuts at Yuushi’s JTB culture festival – for most of its length, anyway.  Some of them could be seen (the youkai, basically) and some not (the ghosts), but a good time was had by all except poor Furuhonya-san, who showed up too late.  And by the way, why was poor Kuri left behind at the apartments when all the other ghosts (even Ruriko, who got a little handsy with the students at the yakisoba booth) got to come?  That hardly seems fair.  My favorite moment here was Kottou-ya selling a magical item that also charges phones.

The big moment of the episode, though, was the reveal that Chiaki-sensei was actually a part-time idol (dirt that the indefatigable Tashiro dug up).  The president more or less hounded him into performing (though a little intervention was required when the hopeless banchou trio tried to sabotage the event) to close the culture festival.  This had the desired effect of rehabilitating Chiaki-chan’s reputation with the students, but his popularity finally dragged Aoiki-sensei’s ugly side out (you knew it was in there).  I’m certainly not surprised to find out she’s such a small person, but I am wondering whether that’s how Youkai Apato is going to leave that storyline (it’d be unusual, but this is an unusual series) or whether there’s drama to come in the (presumed) finale.