It’s certainly no surprise that Mairimiashita! Iruma-kun can turn on a dime, offering up an episode which contrasted completely with the Walter Park arc.  But this was not an episode about surprises to begin with.  I’ve been looking forward to it all week, because even not having read the manga I felt like I knew exactly what to expect.  The Valac family is a safe bet at this point – you know what you’re going to get, you know you’re going to get lots of it, and you know it’s going to make you smile till your face hurts.

Indeed, the only mystery was whether rarely-seen eldest brother Urara would be present (he wasn’t – sort of).  That, and whether we’d finally meet the Valac father – and whether Asai Ayaka would play him too.  He didn’t show, but we did get the first acknowledgement of his existence – he’s an adventurer who’s often sending weird and fun stuff home to the family.  But I think Asai deserves some kind of special award here, because she’s really delivering the goods with the whole Valac sideshow.  And they’re critical to the series’ success, too – more so than you might have realized at first.

Indeed, the Valac family is a kind of Matryoshka doll of zaniness – every time they appear you get more layers of it.  At first you might just think you have a loveably hyper genki girl character, then you get the mother, then the siblings.  Then the production numbers start, and the eldest brother appears, and you see the house, and you get the made-up language…  it just goes on and on.  The Valacs are a kind of self-standing mythology within a mythology here, an entity with their own little concurrent series running next to the main one.  And thank goodness for that.

Taking us even deeper down the Valac rabbit hole than the Kallego visit, we learn that the family lives deep in a psychedelic place called the Hubub Forest, with its own bizarre flora and fauna.  There’s Hit-and-Miss Hill, the “supermarket” where the family does their food shopping, and Collateral Cave, where the ultimate secret ingredient (the Shabu Shabu – he’s every hot pot ingredient in one creature) lives.  And everything happens under the loving guidance of Mommy, the benevolent dictator whose children would seemingly never have the slightest impulse or desire to disagree with her.

For Iruma this is yet another first, being invited to a friend’s house.  So naturally he adapts to the insanity much more easily than Azz, whose own straight-laced demeanor is constantly being put to the test.  One thing this little visit confirms is that Clara is absolutely interested in Iruma-kun.  Konchie – or was it Keebow? – lets it slip that he’s the one she’s “always talking about”.  She also has a tizzy when Mommy decides to share the family albums with Iruma, but an even bigger one when his verdict is that she looks cute.  Ameri is clearly in the catbird seat here, but Clara is definitely in the game – or wants to be, anyway, no matter what her childlike behavior implies.

Once more we get the spectacle of Azz-Azz (he clearly wants to be in the game too) and Clara battling over Iruma’s love through their cooking, though she has the home-forest advantage here.  When it comes to the Shabu Shabu he proves pretty fierce (at least until Mommy shows up), and Azz shows he was listening when Sabnock scolded him.  He assesses the situation and decides that with little ones present and Iruma exhausted the prudent thing to do is not try and show off, but to use his powers to strategically retreat.  The day ends with a lullaby from Clara – who shows that she is her mother’s daughter, no matter how she acts most of the time.

What to make of that cliffhanger ending, with a stern-looking Azazel Henri winging his way towards the Valac home?  Well, Henri is deeply involved in the serious side of the plot of course, but I suspect this has more to do with Ameri wanting equal time with Iruma.  Especially after the girls talk party of Episode 11 clued her in that Clara was someone worth keeping an eye on.  We’ll find out soon enough, but as for the mystery of who’ll be playing Clara’s dad we may have to wait a while longer.

Su…Ki…Ma