Souta’s little sister Nazuna is working at the restaurant. This leads to a discussion with Izumi the next morning where Nazuna ends up falsly believing that Souta is dating Poplar (and that she’s in elementary school). Distraught, Izumi goes off on a “journey” where she runs into Mahiru. Mahiru tries to cheer her up while finding Izumi’s reliance and obsession with her brother (not knowing it’s Souta, of course) a little weird.

Souta's big little sister is big to all the little people

I’m not sure if this is a start of some new arc where Izumi tries to run interference with Souta’s alleged relationship with Poplar the not-really-in-elementary girl or if it was a one-off episode, considering it takes her days to practically craw from one room to another.

In any case, the Izumi stuff was OK. Her conversation with Mahiru was funny, but the rest was just kinda blah I thought. On the other hand, Nazuna is always entertaining and is still definitely my favorite non-regular character in the series. I would be just fine if she just showed up in every episode.

Aoi is frustrated at Souta for not telling her that she’s cute, even though she’s not much bigger than Poplar. As a result, she decides to focus her attention on Hiroomi instead, deciding to stalk him (with Poplar’s help) to find out what he’s so secretive about. Hiroomi, however, uses this as a chance to freak Aoi and Poplar out every chance he gets. Meanwhile, Poplar tries to talk up Mahiru to Souta. Jun harasses Poplar again to take out his frustrations about Yachiyo and Poplar wants to take revenge.

We aren't stalking you. For realz we aren't!

This was a rather disjointed episode that had a ton of stuff going on. I realize that’s not uncommon for 4-koma based series but it seemed to be that way more so than usual this time. The main threads were Poplar trying to help Souta and Mahiru together and Aoi seeking attention from various people.

I’m not sure if all the Aoi stuff is really going anywhere other than her being cute or annoying, depending on her point of view. The Mahiru/Souta thing is where it’s at, but, of course, Souta is still focused on Poplar because she’s so cute, and because Mahiru still can’t get over her punching guys.  Overall this was an OK episode I guess, but it didn’t seem to progress the plot very much.

This is Working’!! (gotta love how the Japanese decide to differentiate their different anime seasons sometime), the 2nd season of this show. I found the first season to be overall OK, though it sometimes dragged. There seemed to be a lot of Souta and Mahiru action, some of it repetition, and not nearly enough Poplar action. Hopefully some of that change in this season.

Souta’s “small thing” fetish wrecks complete havoc as he first upsets Poplar by calling her cute and tiny, then makes things worse when he compares her to bug (and tells Mahiru that she’s “less than a bug”), which ends up making her sulk for the rest of the episode. Hiroomi and Jun then try to trick Poplar by telling her that she can get taller by eating dry lizards, something which Jun finally tells her is a lie before actually goes and tries it.

Mahiru gets the worst of Souta and his tiny fetish

This episodes starts by essentially letting us know again that, out of everyone’s fetishes and oddities, it may very well be Souta who is the most extreme in his. He clearly looses himself when it comes to small things, such as saying that Poplar is the same thing as a bug, which he means to mean that the bug is just as important as her, but obviously sounds like the opposite.

Meanwhile, Mahiru seems to be doing at least marginally better in not punching. She resisted punching Hiroomi at one point, and it’s hard to blame her for clobbering Souta for what he said to her.

This finishes the second series I had been blogging from the spring 2010 season.

Series: Working!!
Media: Yus-m.3.3.w. Fansub (episodes 10 – 13)

I guess there wasn’t anything particularly special about these episodes.  Of course, there was the date episode at the end, but as is often the case with series based off of 4koma, there really wasn’t any sort of real resolution.  I was at least hoping that Inami would progress on her punching, though.  I realize it’s a running gag in the show, but at least have her hold hands with Souta.  Poplar, meanwhile, is once again largely relegated to the sideline, other than her crushing on cross-dressing Souta.

Also, no progress on Yachiyo and Jun, even though I thought there might be.  The only real progress that went on in the last four episodes is that Souta finally realized that he maybe, possible, might see Inami in a different way, though he clearly didn’t realize it as it was.  Again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the characters largely remained static through the series (except, perhaps Inami, in regards to her feeling towards Souta) but it’d been nice to see something different.

The one character I did like through the series was Nazuna, as, not only was the best developed of the secondary characters, I think she might have been even more developed than some of the main characters like Aoi and Hiroomi, and I’m glad that we saw more of her in these episodes.  I also had to laugh in the last episode, that anonymous glasses waitress that we’ve seen around finally get some air time, and repeatedly makes her point and attempts to be “normal” and in the end, her desperate attempts to be and appear normal make the others think she’s weird.

For the series overall, I think it started out good, and it had quite a few laughs, but it really seemed like it stagnated towards the end.  They created a few new situations like tying Inami up and the date that put the running gags to use in ways they hadn’t before, but in the end, the show was still about Inami punching people and Poplar being small, with very deviation away from those plot points.

Again, I guess that’s not unusual for a series like this.  After all, how often did a series like Azumanga Daioh take advantage of the fact that Chiyo was a child genius and that Osaka was dense?  But I think in Azumanga’s case, there were so many characters with their own quirks, and the show took advantage of all of them, so none of them got that old.  And it was just done in a fresh way.  The problem in Working is that only Inami and Poplar had traits that they could really use repeatedly, and after a while, the freshness really ran out.  This wasn’t necessary a bad series, and if a second season came out, I’d consider watching it, but I think they could have done so much more with it than they did.