First Impressions / School Rumble

Summary:
The girls are together for an outing in the mountains. They have brought along Hanai and Harima, who are carrying all of the stuff. As it turns out, part of the reason Hanai’s pack is so heavy is because Imadori was inside. The group stops for lunch, but Tenma forgot to bring all of the food that Yakumo made except for the rice. Faced with the prospect of eating more of Tenma and Eri’s onigiri, Harima offers to cook. He and Hanai end up in a cooking showdown and both go out to gather their ingredients. The rules are that they can cook anything, but they have to get their own ingredients. Harima ends up at the stream catching fish, but comes across a monster-sized crab. Meanwhile, Hanai is gathering mushrooms when he hears an animal’s call. The sounds are actually coming from a wild boar. Both guys get their ingredients and start cooking. Imadori had also wanted to join the competition, but ends up sleeping through it.
At the judging, first up is Imadori who has surprisingly produced a curry. Everyone’s very impressed until Yakumo mentions that she’s had this somewhere before. Imadori then produces a package of “Guruguru Curry,” which gets him disqualified. Up next is Harima’s crab dish, which is deemed delicious by Tenma and the others. However, there are some problems with the seasoning, as pointed out by Itoko and Youko who briefly show up. Hanai then gets to show off his nabe cooking. It initially brings the girls to tears, but like with Harima, they find faults. To make the final call, Akira brings in the judging committee chairman Karasuma. He chooses…Masaru, Eri’s maid, who flew in with her food.
The second half of the episode takes a look at the part time jobs of several of the characters:
-Harima is trying to get himself involved with anime production.
-Sara and Asou work at the same Chinese restaurant and it’s just the two of them in charge of the store today.
-Yakumo works at a cafe, and her manager wants her to wear a special outfit. Hanai happens to be walking by and notices that there is an advertisement for bunny girls. With the thought of Yakumo dressed up as such, he goes in. She is indeed a bunny girl, but not quite what he thought.
-Nishimoto works at the family video rental business and has recruited some friends to help reorganize the place. Nara finds a hidden door behind a shelf. They convince Nishimoto to open the forbidden door and let them see the other side.
-Lala and Ichijou work at the Was Burger. Imadori tries to order something, but when Ichijou tells him that he’s pointing to the kid’s menu, he calls her stingy. She’s about to cry, so Lala starts beating Imadori up.
-Tenma works in a bakery. They keep bringing her more and more bread to package up until she’s completely exhausted. She imagines that one of the breads is Karasuma, and that he’s asking her to eat him.
-Akira works in a second-hand book store. However, Akira has a secret job too… That night, everyone is headed home from their jobs except Akira, who is transporting a boy on her motorcycle while being chased by a guy with a machine gun in a car. She throws a grenade and blows up her pursuers. Eri sees her and can’t believe it.

The first half had some really good laughs and reminded me of Yakitate!! Japan in the outlandish tasting reactions sort of way. The latter half was a bit more random, with a compilation of everyone’s work, using a lot of extra chapter/omake material (chapter LR, ♭13, etc). It didn’t really seem like this episode had much of a purpose other than to be filler (and I hate using that word). Maybe it’s just because the second series so far has done so well in keeping the plot going from episode to episode that I’ve gotten used to it. I guess you could look at this episode like a ♭ chapter of the manga. I did enjoy watching it though, especially the return of Akira the spy.
Next week, we return to the manga storyline with the start of the basketball arc.

15 Comments

  5. I bet even without seening the episode, I could just tell what happen with Hanai and Yakumo bunny suit, someone must mention to Hanai that Yahumo gonna dress up as a bunny girl and he daydream her into a Playboy bunny suit, then it turn out to be an actually white big fluffy bunny suit instead. I almost bet this is what happen.

    Mike
    Reply

  6. I bet even without seening the episode, I could just tell what happen with Hanai and Yakumo bunny suit, someone must mention to Hanai that Yahumo gonna dress up as a bunny girl and he daydream her into a Playboy bunny suit, then it turn out to be an actually white big fluffy bunny suit instead. I almost bet this is what happen.

    Bingo

    Omni
    Reply

  11. Does nobody end with anybody?

    YAKUMO FOREVER … lol … I feel so behind, I just started watching the second season today. And I can’t sleep because of it … it’s too … argh … too … great.

    Michael
    Reply

  14. The only thing I’ve seen in the manga is Sarah and Asou working at the Chinese Resturaunt, and the Akira parts seem to have been transplanted from another part in the first season. Everything else must be original.

    Wererat42
    Reply

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