Damn, this bubble is crowded.  It’s like riding the Tozai Line at 830 AM on a Thursday.  There’s no question that seasons are much easier for me when things are clear-cut – a few great shows (I mean, ideally), and a bunch of stuff I can comfortably drop.  That’s not this fall – I have a half-dozen shows I can say with no exaggeration are literally tossups, or darn close.  Each of them is there for different reasons, but Mieruko-chan is definitely one of them.  Heck, I already dropped this series for an episode and then came back to it.

The crass and lurid fanservice has mostly stopped – that’s good.  That frees me to make a decision more or less on the merits of the show itself, not that that’s easy.  One of my biggest problems with Mieruko-chan is how repetitive it is.  There’s development here – we’ve gotten new characters woven into the story, and there’s a little more nuance to what Miko is seeing.  But the formula is kind of on loop – Miko seeing terrifying things and trying not to freak out.  We get it – her life sucks because of this.  I don’t need to watch extended montages of her experiencing it week after week.

The new girl, Yuria (who we have seen in passing at school) is kind of annoying.  And kind of an annoying archetype.  She may bring some workable possibilities for the plot though, at least.  She can see them too, and is convinced she’s some sort of super-powerful medium.  She even tries to get Takeda-san (the fortunetelling fraudster turbo-granny) to take her on as an apprentice.  Once she finds out Miko and Hana were the last two to visit the shop before Takeda closed it she becomes a bit obsessed with Miko – which quickly clues her into the fact that Miko can see what she can (though in truth, a lot more).

Yuria is presumably less sensitive spiritually than Miko, plain and simple.  That makes her life a lot less terrifying, and her a lot luckier than Miko.  Miko tries to play dumb but it’s obvious Yuria isn’t buying it.  The whole thing where Miko put a submission hold on Yuria to try and escape the equipment room was just kind of awkward and clumsy, which has been a problem too often in these first five episodes.  We’ll see where this thread goes, but for now Miko does own up to at least part of the truth – which I guess is kind of a big deal, since as far as I know it’s the first time she’s shared any part of the truth with anyone.

The B-part is more interesting, another instance where something positive comes out of Miko’s ability.  She picks up (literally) a confused old lady and winds up carrying her home (not sure how the old gal remembered where she lives), where a spirit is waiting for them.  Miko is terrified, naturally, but the man is muttering the combination to a safe – his safe, which contains the comb he bought his wife as a gift.  I’m not sure how putting that comb on magically restored the woman to lucidity, but it’s another case of Miko’s “curse” helping someone.  I hope we see more of that and less recycled freak-out moments in the coming weeks – that would make my blogging decision a little easier.