天下制覇

This director really loves his weird faces.

Impressions:

This episode certainly started off dicey, with Inami lamenting how Katanashi never called her cute, but then Yamada horned in and took the first third of the episode away from her, dragging Poplar into her own schemes to cash in on being cute like Poplar was via stalking Souma as he screwed with them. But then… SURPRISE TWIST… Inami started whining again, but this time, the Claw took over and just prodded her in the face until she went away. The would have been more Freudian if Inami wasn’t so terrible. Yada yada, doll named Inami to make Katanashi say it was cute and that was the last we had to see of her until the end where Poplar got distracted and turned the staff into a family.

The second half was about evenly split between by Poplar and Satou fighting over him messing up her hair all the time and Yamada clinging to Otou. It wasn’t as strong as the first half, but I do have to say that I am significantly enjoying this season of the show more than the first so far. It’s mostly the relative lack of Inami, who is like a fun vampire, sucking all the fun out of the entire show whenever she’s on screen. The pacing and general flow of episodes seems a lot better so far as well, as well as the production and silliness in general, although with a massive sample size of two, it’s probably a little too soon to make any strong conclusions. If they keep focusing on silly shenanigans with the cast over Inami and her moronic issues though, I’m happy. It still won’t be the strongest comedy out there, or even possibly the strongest today, but so far it’s a marked improvement over last season.

Preview:

A family affair.