天下制覇

Honestly… who thought giving Machi a knife would be a good idea?

Impressions:

There was something about the episode that just didn’t jive with me. I love Machi and all, but part of her charm is that she’s deadpan and completely malicious in a world of energetic and optimistic people. Having a whole episode centered around that single joke, especially with such a painfully obvious punchline just didn’t work for me particularly well. There were some good moments between Machi and Rin, but I honestly was not a particularly big fan of the episode.

Summary:

Machi is wasting away on her porch from hunger, so Ayane offers to feed our petulant little priestess. While eating though, Ayane taunts her that she has absolutely no clue how to take care even the simplest things herself, which of course invokes Machi’s rage.

Machi heads over to the cosplay queen’s home for instruction in the first basic need of mankind, food. Chikage attempts to teach her a basic recipe, but for the most part ends up just throwing cooking tooks and food at poor Machi and making a giant mess until Panako drags Chikage off for reeducation and Machi moves on.

Over at Rin’s, Machi calls her shisho (master), which pisses Mikoto off, but Rin offers to teach her what she knows. Back at the Ayane bath, Machi shows her the fruits of her labors… a bento set… with nothing inside, but she made the actual bento box herself.

The next morning, Machi’s there when Rin wakes up for further instructions. Moving over to the kitchen, Machi is giggling to herself and stroking the knife while Rin is trying to instruct her. Machi also pretends that the fish Rin is teaching her how to scale is crying for mercy until Rin smacks her and tells her to knock it off.

It’s apparently not a busy day for Suzu, Ikuto and Ayane, as they’re playing watchdog to some cows. Ayane shares her troubles with Machi. Suzu and Ayane learned to cook from their mothers, but since Machi has never taken an interest in that kind of thing, she missed out, same as Ikuto. A kind word from Ikuto to Suzu incites a fight right above his lap about who is and who isn’t allowed to make him food which continues until they receive a challenge letter dinner date arrow inviting Ikuto to dinner with Machi. In the manga, I recall Ayane and Suzu being legitimately scared of Machi’s cooking, but they’re pretty gung-ho about it this time around.

On the way to Machi’s they run into Rin. She’s staggers out, near death, and tries to warn them away from Machi’s kitchen. The three try to run, but Machi’s shinigami are already there to drag them the rest of the way.

Machi welcomes them to her home of doom and excuses herself to go cook. Ayane immediately tries to see if she can’t talk some sense into Machi, but ger spirits are holding the doors shut. Meanwhile, all sorts of terrible screaming and noises are coming from the kitchen and each imagines Machi doing something terrible in there.

Finally, the food is served, and all three look at it in terror while Machi evilly laughs at them. Ayane and Suzu throw Ikuto to the devil and force him to take the first taste. He starts to eat a piece of fish, stops, wondering if it’s poisoned, but Machi’s watching him so intently (even blushing) that he goes for it.

To the surprise of anybody who has never seen an anime before, the food is actually fine. What a shocking twist. Suzu and Ayane start eating as well, but not before Ayane gives a backhanded compliment to Machi and ends up with life sucking bats on her head. Machi reveals the secrets of her labors by opening the kitchen and a torrent of… I’m not even certain what… comes pouring out and Machi tells them that they’re going to eat it all for her.

The post-ep stuff is everybody stuffed from Machi’s cooking and being forced to eat all of it and/or being poisoned by her in the case of Rin’s family.