When you take a look at episode 7 of Sakurako-san and then look back to episode 6, you wonder to yourself. ‘Did episode 6 really happen? Or was it a bad dream?’ because compared to the previous episode. This episode is a lot more interesting. Which is generally surprising to me, because the ‘set up’ episode for a two or three part series of episodes is normally one of the most boring things you can come upon. However,this episode manages to break free of the curse.
It gives you just enough of the story to leave you going ‘Wait, what? Where’s next weeks episode.’ and not going ‘Well, that’s nice….but…’
What I think is the most important is that something actually happened. There was nice dramatic tension between Sakurako and Shotaro. I think the most important thing that made this episode different is since they didn’t introduce any new characters to get to know before they died it gave us time with our main characters and time wasn’t wasted.
So the episode starts at Shotaro’s school festival, it’s cute, Shotaro’s class i doing a butler/maid cafe and serving pancakes. I think the glasses they gave him for his butler look compliment him amazingly. We see that his mother is unable to attend the festival because his brother is ill and hospitalized. So Sakurako offers to come to the festival.
She eats pancakes there but is gone right after she’s done eating. Where is she to be found but the science department. Looking at the bones, then Isozaki comes in and…he almost seems like an entirely different character then the one we saw in the last episode. He’s more like the character I remember him being from the first episode.
Was…Was episode 6 filler? Can you even have filler in an anime like this? Was that in the novels? Was ‘the adventures of side characters’ a chapter?
Well Sakurako bitches Isozaki out about how the bones are stored and how they aren’t being used properly. So they fix up the bones and Isozaki uses this opportunity to ask Sakurako to help him clear out some bones that a previous professor had left behind. So they begin categorizing them.
Not without a price though, three cakes! Pumpkin, from the shop that Shotaro got them from previously! Huh, this cake sounds really good. Now I want pumpkin cake.
So they go through the stuff and come across various bones, including some pet remains. Which leads Shotaro to question about Sakurako’s cat. He goes off on her about dissecting her cat, but like, the cat died of mysterious circumstances. She wanted to know why he died and then she kept the bones….what’s wrong with that?
Let the girl grieve in her own way man!
So it wouldn’t be an episode of a major mystery anime if a dead body didn’t show up. You know, that’s another thing that was missing last episode. I mean, the arc before that didn’t have a dead body either but at least it had the series major ‘villain’ lurking in the background to make up for it.
So they find a chest with a dead body in it and they have to turn it over the police [That don’t get any screen time, which means no Utsumi.]
As the professor and Shotaro are going over the bones after the police return everything but the human remains to the school we see that the cat bones have gone missing. Shotaro naturally thinks that Sakurako-san took them. He goes to talk to her at her house but she’s not there.
She’s talking with a man who appears to be bed-ridden and only able to talk through typing into a computer. A professor Shitara, I can’t recall if that name has come up before in the series. I feel like it has but I feel like it hasn’t, it’s a strange feeling.
I’m excited though, it looks as if we’ll be digging into Sakurako’s past a bit in these next few episodes. I’m worried about the relationship between Shotaro and Sakurako though,as of right now it seems a little strained and that’s unfortunate because I really like the dynamics of their characters.
What else is there to say about this episode other then it was rather nice to see the series come back to form after the mess that was episode six.
~Midnight