Subculture Anime Blog

The worried Chiaki. My final impression is included!

Summary:

Haruka seems to be troubled about something one day, which Chiaki brings up to Kana. Kana initially suggests that Haruka is simply worried about dinner and breakfast preparations, but the two sisters soon discover that this isn’t the case. This brings the girls to come up with plans while Haruka is at school. Uchida and Yoshino visit Haruka at the apartment while the other sisters are still out, and Haruka finally mentions to them that she is worried about Chiaki and Kana’s recently strange behavior. Uchida and Yoshino simply suggest that she do something to make them laugh, and when the girls practice this, Haruka is brought to laughter with them. When Chiaki and Kana arrive home, Chiaki despairs at her belief that Haruka actually wants sisters like Yoshino or Uchida. Kana suggests that she is wrong again, however, joining the laughter by suggesting a game of niramekko (staring game) with everyone.

Chiaki wakes from a frightening dream in the middle of the night, then deciding to sleep with Kana. Haruka finds Chiaki quite attached to Kana the next morning, as she learns that Chiaki had a nightmare about Kana’s leaving to buy something and not returning. Chiaki refuses to leave Kana’s side for quite awhile, but as Kana gets tired of this, she eventually takes a nap in the afternoon. As Haruka returns home from a day out with her friends, she is greeted by a waking Kana quickly attaching herself to her. As Chiaki then explains, while still holding onto her older sister, Kana had a bad dream about Haruka going to the bathroom and never returning.

While Uchida and Yoshino are visiting the Minami apartment, they make preparations for Tanabata. Kana decides to make a wish of her own, though she refuses to let the others see it. Kana leaves to buy groceries afterwards, but not before being denied the ability to buy sweets by Haruka. Kana ends up taking awhile to return, and when Haruka and Chiaki read her suggestive card, they start to suspect that she has run away from home. This makes the girls recall previous interactions with Kana, as they start to cry. The two girls prepare to leave in search for their sister, but by then, Kana returns to the surprise of Chiaki and Haruka. Upon celebrating Tanabata later, it is revealed that Kana had two parts to her card. In reality, she had only wished for more meat.

In other places, Hosaka has a frightening dream about losing Haruka.

Impression:

Awwwwww~. While this episode didn’t feel like any of the episodes proceeding it, I did appreciate it for the slice of life and family themes. I don’t think there’s anyone out there with siblings who can say they haven’t experienced similar events. Chiaki’s attaching to Kana was adorable, as was her mistakingly believing that Haruka did not love her anymore. I’m also surprised that there were actually references to previous episodes this week. I guess this overall felt more like a second season episode than anything else. But while this was nowhere near as funny as most of the episodes we’ve been getting recently, I do feel like it ended the series gracefully. After all, Minami-ke is a show about family and friends in the end.

Final Impression:

I wasn’t sure what to think when I heard that Minami-ke was going to have a third season. While I had suddenly become a huge fan of the series after the first one, Studio asread had made a wreckage of the series in the second season. I went into the third season hesitantly upon hearing that this studio would again be handling the production, but fortunately for all of us, they had took all of their criticism constructively. Okaeri went back to the roots, and brought back everything we loved about Minami-ke in the first place. Gone were useless characters like Fuyuki and bad anime original episodes, as we once again experienced a blast of nostalgic humor.

Some fans may have been asking for more Hosaka or even Mako-chan, but I felt like their absence was necessary after being overwhelmed by them in the first two seasons. I do wish that the one new character to show up, Hitomi, had more screen time though. She had an astounding one segment of one episode to work with. Still, with some characters taking a backseat in this season, others started to shine. For one, I’ve definitely become an Atsuko fan after this season!

So yea, overall, the third season of Minami-ke was a blast. Sure, some of the production could have been better in the art/animation department, but that wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying the show. Going into another series after this would probably be overkill though, so I’m hoping asread (or anyone else) stops while they’re ahead.