Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid – 07

「坊ちゃんとアリスのなんでもない一日」 (Botchan to Arisu no Nandemonai Ichinichi)
“The Duke’s and Alice’s Uneventful Day”

Sometimes home remedies (or any remedy for that matter) work and sometimes they don’t. In Bocchan’s case, unfortunately, they don’t work. I at least give Alice and Bocchan props for trying. As dubious as the witch’s pot may be, the pot and Bocchan seem to have something in common with blushing (a natural reaction to Alice’s bold moves). Using pick-up lines to work the pot was pretty hilarious, as was passing the pot off to Rob (who takes it all in stride). I would have to agree with Bocchan-those witches can be weird. But then again, so are some of the humans in Bocchan’s life.

One of the things I like about Shinigami Bocchan is that it uses such little details, like Bocchan’s memories of happy times centering around Alice, to get across how the two feel about each other in the absence of more obvious moves like kissing or holding hands.

When something doesn’t work, then try, try again, which Alice and Bocchan certainly do-this time with cursed sheet music. Going into it, I knew the sheet music probably wasn’t going to break the curse and I felt bad that Bocchan was putting so much confidence in his music playing skills when nothing was probably going to happen- not due to his skill, but the curse’s nature. His skills came through in the end, playing the piece perfectly, but the broken curse turning out to be a different than the one he wants broken. At least he got the frisky MacFarlane out of the way and thanks to Alice, he can remain upbeat even in the face of failure.

To quote Bocchan: “All we ever seem to talk about lately is your clothes”. He hit the nail on the head as once again, Alice’s clothes are the topic for Bocchan’s blushes. He is anxious that her liberal skin exposure means she doesn’t see him as a man, though he has nothing to worry about on that front. It is clear she thinks of him as a man and that her skin exposure is for his eyes. Normally, for me at least, the whole gag of revealing clothing and blushing boys can get pretty old for me. For this show, they manage to avoid that by having the characters with their intricacies and idiosyncrasies make up for that, keeping it interesting even in the face of repeating gags.

Viola is certainly a character with a lot of idiosyncrasies. Once again, she gives her well-intentioned but useless advice (one has to wonder, where does she get her ideas from?), sending Bocchan on a wild goose chase to simultaneously inspire terror and love in Alice’s heart. His adorable try-hard attitude of scaring Alice doesn’t work-but everything still works out, because her heart already belongs to him.

It was cute to see Bocchan try for once to tease Alice. I loved the twist that Alice hung up the picture that Bocchan meant to scare her with, succeeding in scaring only Bocchan-definitely worth a chuckle. Part of why Bocchan is so adorable is that he thinks he fails in attempts to capture Alice’s heart, but in reality, those “failures” endear him more to Alice and show off his earnest character.

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