Subculture Anime Blog

Yuno…becoming an adult?

Summary:

After dozing off while working on her novel, Sae is waken by a call from Hiro outside her room. When Hiro enters, Sae reveals to her that she has to meet with her editor soon. When Yuno and Miyako stop by, they wish Sae luck before attending to their own business. After getting a call from her mother about Chika’s attending of a summer course, Sae leaves to a cafe to continue her work. Natsume runs into Sae inside, expressing her usual warnings about Sae working on her novel more than attending school activities. After she leaves, however, Sae can only worry if Natsume saw the content of her pages or not. Sae is soon greeted by her editor Naoi, who quickly checks the content of Sae’s pages. When Naoi sees that Sae is writing a romance novel, she mentions the need for experience to write such things. Sae is worried by this, but Naoi simply wishes her luck with the rest of the story before parting ways with her.

When Sae returns to the Hidamari apartments, she finds Hiro looking at some herbs outside. Sae brings up her worries about Chika’s summer courses to her, but invites her to eat ice cream with the rest of the girls before wrapping her mind around it too much. The girls begin discussing summer events while eating their ice cream, but Sae suddenly brings up the research she is doing for her novel to them. Of course, none of the girls have had any real experience. This includes Sae. The girls all head their separate ways that night, but before Hiro leaves, she reminds Sae to call her sister. Sae brings up the summer courses and studies to Chika when she does call, but because she isn’t able to be honest about her feelings, the two get into a small argument as usual. While in the bath afterwards, Sae remembers Hiro’s suggestion that love involved thinking about someone all of the time. For Sae, this ended up being Chika for the day. Sae receives a mail from Hiro about her call to Chika afterwards, but she becomes too embarrassed to send her reply before going to sleep.

When all of the girls head to school on another day, Miyako expresses her excitement towards the cream puffs Hiro and Sae will be making that day. Because of this, Miyako cannot seem to concentrate during her own classes. While Hiro works on the recipe with the rest of her class, many of the students are impressed with how good she is at cooking. Despite this, not all of her advice is perfect. After completing their cream puffs, the class has their teacher try one of them. She is extremely impressed, but she finds it odd when Hiro has put strawberries in them. Yuno and Miyako are just as delighted when they meet Hiro and Sae during break time, and Yuno expresses her wish to learn how to make the cream puffs later. Hiro goes to the bookstore afterwards, almost picking up a certain magazine while there. While she doesn’t, Natsume enters to do so herself. When she sees Hiro, she quickly purchases it in embarrassment.

Hiro mentions her seeing of Natsume to Sae later, before quickly becoming excited from seeing a chocolate diet in her own magazine. When Miyako and Yuno show up with payback for the cream puffs from earlier, Hiro is extremely excited to find that it consists of chocolate. Sae falls asleep amidst the girls’ conversation, so Hiro quickly puts a coat above her before leaving with the other girls. In the starry sky outside, Yuno and Miyako mention that Hiro is somewhat like Sae’s wife and their mother. This embarrasses Hiro, but when she returns to her room to bathe afterwards, she can only worry about Sae’s well being.

Preview: Can they get drunk off that?

Impression:

In before Yoshinoya-sensei in a bikini apron! This week, we had a split episode that focused on Sae and Hiro respectively. Honestly, even though it seemed a bit shorter, I probably liked Hiro’s portion better out of the two. It’s not that I dislike Sae’s character, but it seems like most of her actions are kind of predictable. I love the worries she has for Chika for example, but her dishonest nature made it so obvious how she would actually talk to her by the end. The end of her section suggested a continuation of the story, but I can only wonder exactly when this will take place. I predicted something similar in an earlier episode, and a reader pointed out that the “continuation” of the episode had actually happened in the first season (I have yet to go back and watch that episode).

I also noticed that there were a ton of references in this episode, including some from Gurren Lagann, Death Note, and HIMM. This is pretty typical of Shaft, but I wouldn’t usually expect it coming from Hidamari Sketch. I think this may have been to catch many viewers’ attention, since it easily seems like this is an episode many would become bored with easily. Noticing Ume-sensei’s usual hilarious calling in this episode, I also started to wonder how much influence she has over the adaption of her work. It seems pretty clear that she’s not disappointed with Shaft’s job at all, but it just came to mind. There aren’t many manga authors who voice themselves in anime, after all.

Natsume had quite a bit more screen time than she usually does in this episode too. Her purpose in the show has typically been pretty hard to figure out for me, but after this episode, I guess it started clearing up a bit. She really must just be tsundere for Sae’s work! Watching Sae and Hiro have bath parts in this episode was pretty funny, even after Miyako’s similar scene, but I’m hoping this part returns to Yuno next week. It just doesn’t seem right otherwise!