Onsen Yousei Hakone-chan Episodes 4 + 5: First Day on the Job, and Growing Up

Episode 4

I thought it’d be a better idea to cover this show biweekly as there’s not much to say for every episode, so it’s better to make a longer post once every two weeks than a short post every week.

With episode 4, we start off with what we got last time. Hakone had gotten the position of Tour Ambassador, so she’s finally gonna start off her new job. She’s at a train station with the rest of the Association and there she finally kicks in to her routine. She sprays the poor mascot again even though it didn’t even do anything. This catches the attention of passerby. Then she does the same thing as before by making a geyser from a foot bath. And from using her powers so much with her tiny body she’s not accustomed to yet, she passes out. She overdoes it, but that just shows how much she cares about people. Tohya sees this and buys her a gift. Two hair ties for her pigtails that look like her secret box. He then takes her to get steamed buns, but the person that works there isn’t even there so Hakone gets upset.

Really that’s all I can say for that episode, it was kinda the same as the previous one so that’s why this is so short. But I’m slowly warming up to Hakone-chan. Like Tohya I didn’t like her snobby attitude at first, but she really does have a good heart. She really does like people, and gets along with them. So I think Tour Ambassador is a good job for her.

Episode 5

This episode was a little more ridiculous but it sort of moved the plot that we were given. Ridiculous in the sense of how dumb the characters are. This is just as bad as characters not recognizing the magical girl in her transformed state from her regular state when they look identical.

So all of a sudden, Hakone has grown up! Funnily enough she doesn’t even notice when she’s brushing her teeth in front of a mirror, only noticing when Aki points it out. But Aki doesn’t even recognize her until Hakone vomits out a lot of water. Hakone is excited she’s back to her true form: breasts, longer hair, and taller. So she wants to go out into town to tell and show everyone, but Aki stops her because her clothes from before are too short. So she goes out wearing a spare of Aki’s uniform that was lent to her and off she goes.

It’s funny how no one recognizes her. She looks exactly the same except the stuff I mentioned before. She goes to the steamed bun store she always goes to where the woman clerk recognizes her, but she’s confused that she doesn’t recognize her, or the other people in the shop. Because the Hakone they know is a small, cute girl. Hakone gets upset and runs off, where she bumps into Tohya, who also doesn’t recognize her. And I thought he would since she was still wearing the box-hair ties for her pigtails, so he of all people should have known it was her. Haruna comes by and sees them together, surprise surprise, she doesn’t know that’s Hakone either. And she starts getting jealous that she’s all over Tohya. It’s not until Hakone sprays Tohya with water that both of them realize it’s her. Also, after she sprayed water on him she turned back to a child.

Apparently, the reason why she went back to her regular-grown form is because she lives off of people noticing her. Which makes sense. She was basically ignored for a long time until Tohya came around so that’s why she was a kid. But after becoming the Tour Ambassador and becoming well-known among the people in the town, things have been changing and she was able to turn to her true form. Now she needs to find a way to return to her true form permanently.

So we finally moved a bit. Now I wonder just what Hakone will do to get more attention. Also in the end of the 5th episode, we finally got to see the gothic lolita girl from the opening, so we’re just going to spend next episode introducing her.