Lamune – 04

Short Summary:
In the absence of her parents, Isawa Tae takes care of her three young siblings at home and is the head of the student council at school. Kenji and Nanami sign up with her to do some volunteer work that involves painting the school and cleaning up around town. Their final stop is the beach that’s littered with trash. Kenji finds Tae working alone, and goes over to help her. The two talk about how Kenji always has so many girls around him and Tae is always alone. She gives Kenji some candy as thanks, and he responds by saying how great Tae is for working so hard by herself. Tae flashbacks to when she was younger and her siblings were being petted on the head by their father. But instead of doing the same to her, her father only gave her the candy. In the present, seeing Tae about to cry from her memories, Kenji starts to pet her on the head and praise her. Tae looks really happy and asks him to continue doing it.

I really don’t have much to say about this episode. The animation is greatly improved over last week, though there are still a number of lower quality distance shots. Most of the close-up shots, especially during the flashback-to-when-they-were-young parts, are exceptionally animated. As for the plot, it’s about the same as the last few weeks in the sense that nothing really happens, but better because I actually enjoyed watching most of it (the petting Tae’s head scene in particular for cuteness factor). I’m still rather inclined to drop this series at this point, but I’m holding out for the Sakura Hiromi episode, whenever that is. Next week is about Suzuka, Kenji’s little sister.