Houkago Teibou Nisshi – 05

「潮干狩りと顧問」 (Shiohigari to Komon)
“Clamming and an Advisor”

This week’s Houkago Teibou Nisshi goes into the fun of catching seafood without putting a reel into the water. But Hina’s efforts to catch clams is short-lived when a surprise guest eats through almost all of their clams.

The first half of Episode 05 was a pivotal moment for Hina as she was able to be the first to the punch in gathering the catch of the day. It was interesting to see how the episode tackled catching clams considering how they had to approach the topic of how the club approaches situations where they have to forego their rods and reels in favor of combing through the tidal flats for their catch. It also gave us some fun scenes like Hina trying to survive as Natsumi uses her for support on the stickier parts of the tidal flats, causing them to have a stand-off where one must think on their wits to avoid eating dirt.

But the main highlight of the episode was the introduction of Sayaka Kotani, the advisor for the club and the school nurse. In hindsight, it should’ve been easy to tell that Sayaka would adhere to the basics of your standard drunk teacher, but they did a good job at slowly teasing it out with how calm and collected she is in comparison to others that stick to her tropes.

To the show’s credit, Sayaka is also a hilarious addition to the cast because of her wily personality. On the surface, she would come off as innocent or kind enough to be someone you’d let your guard down around like what Hina ends up doing. But once she gets the green light to get her way, she goes from being meek and personable to selfish and boorish as she starts pounding down beers. As soon as the gloves come off, it’s easy to see her real reason for supervising the club is to eat the fish they catch and get wasted in their clubhouse since her apartment is a short walk and the pier lets her park nearby overnight for free.

Overall, a pretty decent episode, but it is heavily dominated by Sayaka’s intro so there weren’t too many fishing tips to go off of aside from mulling through tidal flats for clams. But on the flip side, it’s nice to see that Sayaka is among the higher echelons of drunk staff since her demeanor is a lot more interesting than the usual drunk teacher character that usually operates on a more mean-spirited platform.