Summary
Kyouko comes up with an idea to pair everyone off for a Christmas mock date, but the pairs are a little unusual, with not everyone getting who they wanted. A few days later, everyone celebrates New Years with their families.
Impression (too…many…screenies)
This week’s episode was all about celebrating Christmas in the middle of summer for some reason, and as usual the Amusement Club as well as the Student Council get roped into one of Kyouko’s crazy activities, which this time is a pretend coupling date that’s supposedly decided through a lottery. While I have a feeling Kyouko rigged it somehow so she ended up with Chinatsu, the other pairings were really unique – while Himawari and Sakurako were in denial as usual, I found both Ayano + Yui as well as Akari + Chitose to be quite interesting pairings.
Ayano and Yui just ended up sitting there for the whole date in an awkward silence, as they both only know each other through Kyouko really. Watching the other couples in the park profess their love to their dates didn’t help at all either. Similarly, Chitose and Akari weren’t too familiar with each other, but they did end up making dodgy conversation. The lack of nosebleeding was not sorely missed whatsoever, its nice actually for Chitose to appear in this show without fantasizing all the time. Considering it’s a running gag, only one nosebleed is pretty good actually xD Kyouko took Meruru Chinatsu to see Mirakurun, which she surprisingly took a fancy to at the end of the movie, which is rather unlike her bitchy reaction of the series when she cosplayed for Mari-chan last episode. Chinatsu ends up warming up to Kyouko after she buys her a Kyuubey stuffed toy, which probably made Kyouko’s Christmas.
New Years went by fairly normally for the Amusement Club, with Mari-chan coming over to Yui’s house and Kyouko sleeping the whole day until she hears the word money xD One interesting point seemed to be that Chinatsu’s sister seems to know Akari’s siscon onee-chan, which will hopefully relate to something in the future. I hope Chinatsu’s onee-chan is a completely normal person, though from what I’ve seen so far, that’s probably unlikely. The show is called Yuru Yuri after all.
While I felt this episode wasn’t boring by any means, it didn’t have the appeal that last week did, and the only time I really burst out laughing was at Chinatsu’s death rabbit drawing on her New Years greeting card. The episode also did a lot of skipping between the pairings, and it all seemed a little disjointed to me, especially as most of the characters acted normal when paired up with different people. Next week looks Student Council-centric, and OMG Chitose can drool as well as nosebleed now. High hopes from me for the April Fools gags though.