This was a pretty important week for Nami yo Kiite Kure.  For the first time in a manner incorporated with the flow of the narrative we saw Minare the radio personality in action, and given that her riffing is going to be a major component of the series going forward, it’s vital that it actually works.  Since the one taste of it we’d had was the out of context flash-forward which started the premiere and that didn’t really work, there was legitimate reason to be concerned.  But not so much now.

Maybe the one characteristic that really stands out about Minare is intensity.  Everything she does and even thinks is full-bore, be it romance or work or life in general. It’s this quality that really drew Matou-san to her, I think, and in this respect Sugimiya Riho’s portrayal of Minare has really grown on me.  I don’t think a character like this works unless they’re palpably undercut with a bit of desperation at all times, and it falls to Sugmiya to communicate that.  Her radio career has to reflect it too, and this week’s premiere certainly does.

I don’t actually know how famous Orson Welles’ great War of the Worlds fake-out is in Japan, but pretty much everyone in my generation in the States knows about it.  Welles and Wells (there’s actually a local radio interview with the two of them together available if you search for it), a match made in Heaven.  Welles – incredibly still in his 20s when he pulled off this spectacular hoax – claimed to be surprised by how many people were fooled by what he intended as a simple radio drama.  I would imagine radio people (like Matou) worldwide still view this is one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the medium.

Matou informs Minare that he’s managed to make hers a non-sponsor segment (getting approval rather than searching for sponsors was the real reason for the wait).  That of course gives Matou the chance to do whatever the hell he wants, which is the whole idea, and his mad genius approach to Minare is definitely one of the most fascinating elements of Nami yo Kiite Kure.  They have a great chemistry, these two – they’re each using each other buts its a victimless crime, because both are getting something out of it and neither has any illusions about the real nature of the relationship.

Matou’s vision for the first segment (and Minare has failed to come up with any ideas of her own) is a hijacked radio broadcast by a woman who’s just killed the man who betrayed her.  It’s written by the mysterious Kureko Katsumi (the wonderful Yamaji Kazuhiro), but at Matou’s request he’s intentionally left much of it for her to ad lib.  For all that she curses him out over it this is clearly the right move, and reflects how well Matou-san understands his business and his new talent.  This is where Minare shines as a performer, because when she’s making it up on the fly that vital element of desperation creeps up to the surface.  And that’s especially important given the theme of this episode.

That Mitsuo’s new girlfriend just happened to be in the midst of killing him in the same fashion Minare is describing on-air is a bit of a stretch, but in that sense it works our for the best I suppose.  It’s very dangerous for Minare to steer so close to reality in a segment like this – in truth the only fictionalized part is her killing Mitsuo, because the rest of it is all straight out of her fantasy life.  That’s the point of the improvization though – it’s authentic because it comes from Minare’s subconscious, whether she wants that or not.

As ever Nami steers from soup curry to radio rather sharply, with each part of Minare’s world seeming to have little overlap with the other.  Last week’s creepiness with Makie merits nary a mention here, though the episode’s final moments suggest a possible swing back to that pole next week as Minare tries to cut the curry cord (and the Nakahara cord) once and for all.  I don’t think that’s going to be as easy as she thinks, however – Voyager and its denizens have their claws in her deeper than she cares to admit.