Subculture Anime Blog

Finally catching up with Airantou

Summary:

Ikuto walks up to Suzu while she is organizing vegetables, and she faints from thinking too much. Suzu notices that Ikuto has been leaving home alone recently, and this is because he is a teacher at the island’s school. The other villagers teach subjects there as well, but Suzu has always refused to go. One day, the students and teachers in class come up with a plan to have Suzu come to school. Ikuto takes her on a long route to somewhere unknown, while the rest of the villages try a little to hard to seem natural. After going through a long set of detours and falling into a trap, Ikuto and Suzu end up in Chikage’s study. Suzu won’t be educated so easily, so she quickly runs out.

Rin, Mikoto, and Yukino attempt to stop her, but Suzu easily passes them. Suzu lands on Ikuto on her way down from a jump, and walks away after seemingly knocking him out. However, Ikuto was only pretending. He grabs hold of Suzu’s foot, and gives her a lot of tickling. Suzu expresses how mean it is for Ikuto to try and force her to do something she didn’t like, but Ikuto tells her of his experiences on the island. With all the hardships he went through, he could go on because of Suzu. Suzu finally decides to go to school, which pleases all of the villagers there. Suzu finally learns to enjoy school, and Ikuto rewards her with daifuku when they get home. Suzu expresses that while Ikuto has been leaving without her recently, she has felt like he has disappeared from her. They laugh this off, but Ikuto then looks into the distance where a letter in a bottle drifts in the water.

Impression:

Well this was another typical Airantou episode, but I’ve noticed a few positive points about it after being without it for two weeks. Although I would definitely call it a love comedy, the show isn’t really meant to be the funniest show around. This anime kind of gives off that “feel good” feeling that cartoons are always known for. It’s just kind of fun to experience what is going around on the island, as pointless as it is. Everyone has been busy bashing this show, and I’m guilty of this too, but I’m still trying to give it a chance. It’s not as if I can’t stand the show, considering that I’m almost at the point of finishing coverage of it.

I kind of missed Yui Horie’s voice, and it was pretty funny to see how dumb Suzu was in this episode. We also saw a bit of Ikuto’s more aggressive side. It’s funny that both of the two main seiyus also play in Tokyo Majin in the same season. Honesty, hearing Ikuto’s voice makes me want to watch that show. A usual complaint that I have about this episode was the random cutting in and out of audio. I’ve studied and done video editing in the past, but it doesn’t take an expert to see how poorly done it is. Suzu and Ikuto have been getting along well as usual, but I’m afraid that they seem to be giving off more of a “brother and sister” feeling. Hopefully their relationship will advance with the last few episodes at least a little bit. Seeing the message in the bottle not extremely far from the shore has me slightly interested, and it makes me wonder what Ikuto plans to do about his sister who hasn’t seen him for so long.