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The
Setup: Wha? Akiko, Kyusaku, Ryunosuke and Nuku
Nuku are all living together? Akiko is trying to
behave like a normal housewife? How can this be?
How long can it last?
Naturally,
all is not as it seems. Akiko has agreed to live
like this only so she can be with Ryunosuke. Trying
to live like a 'normal' Japanese family within the
spacious grounds of the Mishima family estate is a
little trying, to say the least! (Ryunosuke: 'It's
like living on the set of a TV sitcom.') Can Akiko
stand it? Will Arisa, heartbroken at seeing her
heroine broken like this, try to intervene? Why is
Kyusaku doing this to Akiko? Is Nuku Nuku a little
too interested in Grandfather Mishima's pet mouse?
*^.^* It's a crisis point for the
family!
My
Review and Thoughts: I love this
episode. Now that the characters and situations are
firmly established in the audience's mind, the
writers and animators start to play with our
expectations. The mood of heavy drama in Phase OIII
is both effective and amusing, as tension is built
up and then dispersed with silliness. (For example,
in one scene Kyusaku picks up what looks like some
kind of gun and murmurs 'It's time to finish this.'
A few seconds later we see him making an adjustment
to the weapon, then he holds it up and happily
calls out 'All finished!' He's such a nong. *^.^*)
There are weird moments of visual parody - the
'slasher' style of the first few seconds is
baffling until you figure out what's going on, and
then you have to laugh. Akiko's rendering of Edvard
Munch's 'The Scream' is also a treat.
Kyoko
is hardly in this episode at all (I assume she
spent most of it in traction somewhere after her
accident with the human-fly outfit) but it's a
great one for Arisa fans - only Arisa could wear a
suit of mediaeval European armour with such style.
Her admiration and love for Akiko are beautifully
revealed, and I think it's great that serious
emotions are so well mingled with crazy antics,
without either being trivialised.
This
is, of course, The Episode for Akiko and Kyusaku's
relationship, not to mention a real growth spurt
for Nuku Nuku's emotional maturity. I didn't like
Kyusaku very much for a lot of this episode. In the
end, I have to conclude that although he was right
that Akiko needed to learn to put others first, he
was wrong to manipulate her the way he did, and to
assume that he had the right to teach her a lesson.
A bit paternalistic of him. It took Nuku Nuku's
unexpected defiance to show him that he was being
unfair.
In
the end, this is probably the sweetest episode of
Nuku Nuku (in the weirdest possible way).
And I still wonder what Nuku Nuku did with that
mouse... at some points when she's holding it it
looks dead!
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