You’ll have to forgive me for quoting myself, but when something seems especially relevant I think it’s justified.  And this bit from my Episode 16 post certainly qualifies:

I’ve found over time that I like Osomatsu-san best when it’s sort of serious rather than just going for the biggest gross-out moments and pure absurdity possible.  This series is capable of some very strong character stuff, actually, even if it doesn’t go down that road all that often.

The hard truth is, as funny as Osomatsu-san can be when it hits the comedic mark, I truly believe what makes this an exceptional comedy is its ability to transcend humor.  It can be dark as hell, uncomfortable, and at its best, almost shockingly moving.  And the fact is that it’s nailed it almost every time it’s tried to be – though the number of times it has to the extent it did this week can be counted on one hand, with digits to spare.

Season 1’s “Jyuuushimatsu Falls in Love” certainly set the bar for this series in serious mode – and pretty much period, if you ask me.  I don’t know if “Iyami, Alone in the Wind” equaled that, but if not it sure as hell came close.  This was a fantastic episode start to finish – beautifully shot and artfully written, never feeling the need to fall back on the crutch of a cheap laugh to break the tension (the few laughs here were anything but cheap).  The fact that it was an adaptation of an original manga chapter just makes it that much more interesting as far as I’m concerned.

In my view Iyami is really the strongest “character” in this cast, in that he’s probably the funniest when it comes to pure laughs, but there’s also a depth and complexity to him that makes him much more than a comic device.  He’s almost like a gross-out Charlie Chaplin in a sense, a tramp with dreams of grandeur whose life is full of pathos.  He’s utterly absurd but he can also be a tragic foil in a way someone like Dayon or Dekapan can’t.  There’s a reason why Iyami became so popular during the original series’ run that his notoriety exceeded even the Sextuplets themselves, and even John Lennon was doing a “Sheeh!” when the Beatles visited Japan.

Here, we have Iyami in a premise that certainly recalls Chaplin’s silent masterpiece “The Kid”.  Set in a beautifully-depicted late Meiji-era setting (mostly black-and-white), Iyami is a vagrant in the poor Tokyo shanty “Starving Town“, where he slacks on his rent, steals food, gives away his poop and generally makes a pest of himself.  The local bigshot is Chibita, with the Matsuno brothers as his lackeys.  Dekapan is the town doctor, Totoko (fittingly) a fish monger, Hatabou a shopkeeper – you get the idea.  One day while out scrounging for change, Iyami sees a young blind girl selling flowers get knocked over by a businessman and, after initially considering ripping her off, ends up not only buying a flower from her for 5 Yen, but inviting her to come stay with him in his hovel.

This girl is Okiku-san (the honorific courtesy of Iyami) and her parents died in the Great Kanto Earthquake.  Dekapan examines Kiku and determines that her blindness is curable, but not by the likes of him.  But an visiting American doctor named Kershaw could – for an enormous sum of money.  Iyami decides to do everything in his power to get it, and even when Chibita takes a shine to her and offers to pay for her treatment, she refuses – the money has to come from Iyami oji-san.  Working himself almost to death Iyami still can’t raise enough, though, so in the end Chibita decides to try and allow himself to be “robbed” and give Iyami a chance to save face – but this attempt at a good deed goes wrong, even when the townsfolk gather to intervene.

What can I say – this is just good, old-fashioned tearjerker material here.  There are comedic highlights (like when the blinded Kiku and Iyami both hug Dekapan) but basically, as with “Jyuushimatsu Falls in Love” the other shoe never drops – this premise is played straight as an arrow, right down to the amazingly powerful bittersweet ending.  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that no recent anime comedy besides Osomatsu-san could have pulled this off, and that none of its characters could have starred in it but Iyami.  This series may be a bit inconsistent, but the ability to lift its game to this level is what makes it a must watch every week.