Summary
Sora and Miu have started school again, but the commuting journey takes an hour and a half, which isn’t doing Miu too much good. One day after school, Miu meets up with Nimura and they walk around Ikebukuro together on a “date”, going to the aquarium, a cafe and the mall among other places.
When Sora gets stressed over juggling her club activities, school life and doing household chores, she quits her school choir before finding out that Kurumi, who recently lost her seiyuu job on Hina’s anime series, is going through the same process and is considering quitting the business too. After getting some advice from Raika and Yuuta, she decides to rejoin and strive on a bit more, realizing that she’ll always be able to “sing”.
Impression
First of all, apologies for the lateness of both of these episode posts. Here, have a delicious Miu to make up for it.
You have to remember that Miu is still young, and that sort of commute to and fro every day, as well as a tight schedule on top of that does build some stress, so Miu’s done amazingly well at coping up until now. I did wonder why the other girls were willing to pity Miu from afar, but didn’t take any steps to help her out, like how Yuuta’s college mates let him copy up lecture notes and all that. It’s like they’re giving off a “I sympathise from afar” kind of vibe, which isn’t very helpful to Miu.
I’m not sure what it was, but I didn’t feel quite right when Nimura first turned up and invited Miu out. I know he doesn’t have malicious intent (unlike Sako-senpai and his whole “angel” thing) but the age gap did have me (as well as some people in the cafe xD) a bit wary to start off with. Hmm, maybe Recorder to Randoseru is rubbing off on me after all. Anyway, it got okay after a while, and it was a very fun yet uneventful feeling that the episode left behind. I did love how such an insignificant plot point like a dirtied shoe could develop into the whole Cinderella metaphor though, complete with a glass slipper Nimura totally should have bought, just for the hell of it.
Since we had a day in the life of Miu for Episode 9, you’d expect the same for Sora, and we did get one in a broad sense. She’s actually worse off than Miu in terms of coping with juggling everything, since she has to cook, help around the flat as well as deal with her after school club. I felt pretty neutral when she quit her choir so easily in an attempt to lessen her workload (since it’s totally understandable) but then just telling Kurumi not to give up at something she loves is just being a hypocrite.
Speaking of Kurumi, I find it a bit weird that as a seiyuu, she only has one ongoing job. Most seiyuu nowadays have a few roles across each season (apart from Hanazawa Kana, who makes it into nearly everything) and I would think it’s easy enough to get a role in another magical girl/kiddy anime. And if not, enemies (or sometimes protagonists!) always make it back somehow. cough Tsutsugami Gai cough
Overall, both of these episodes didn’t have too much plot in them, more like a transition arc of sorts. One thing I noticed was how Yuuta seems to have taken a back seat now, and Papakiki’s focusing more on the girls and their lives. I think both the directors and myself feel that a Hina episode wouldn’t be too good of an idea, no matter how cute she is, so the plot bunnies will hopefully return soon xD