I actually liked this episode.
Impression
Is it strange that I actually liked this episode? Instead of being about some seemingly unrelated mystery, it focused quite a lot on the brass band setting without having it come in as an afterthought – many of the past episodes tended to be about a mystery or puzzle surrounding a character that just so happened to be a great musician who could join their club. Serizawa’s episode was directly focused on her and her relationship with music and with the brass band – how her declining hearing made it harder and harder for her to pursue her dream career, and how, as an extremely good clarinet player, it was such a pity she wasn’t willing to help bolster their numbers. I can definitely understand how playing music might mean different things to different people, and how playing in a school brass band might feel like a waste of time from her perspective – especially one that isn’t really taking themselves that seriously. Okay, maybe Haruta says they are, but (i) they don’t have enough members and won’t be taken seriously by others anyway; (ii) the show itself isn’t taking their pursuit of Fumonkan seriously as a plot point; and (iii) any brass band’s efforts will pale in comparison to Euphonium.
That’s another reason why I liked this episode – it was rather grounded in reality, much like Serizawa’s own misfortune. It’s really unfortunate, but shit happens in life, and it’s probably partly because of her own experiences that Serizawa was able to give it to them straight. If they try for Fumonkan’s A-division this year, with their current numbers, they’ll most likely experience a morale-crushing failure. In turn, that probably won’t look great for Kusakabe-sensei as glittering as his past credentials might have been, and because Haruta is pretty much doing all this for his sake it won’t be something Haruta will go after. So it looks more likely that they’ll go for the B-division regional competition instead, and I bet that’s what we saw them about to compete in during the first episode’s opening scene.
Minimal amounts of Haruta was another positive aspect. And Chika had some great lines, from hugging people to talking about how Level 99 ojou-samas are ‘totally not cute’. In fact, everything that made the episode good was pretty much because they removed everything that made me dislike the previous episodes – a lot of obnoxious Haruta, a minor role for Chika in comparison, weird mysteries solved through random trivia and an inexplicable band member suddenly gained at the end of the episode (or the start of the next one) once their personal life problems were forcibly solved by Sherlock. Serizawa not joining was what I wanted, as weird as that might sound – I wanted something that broke the formula of a band member per week and a dodgy puzzle per week, and this is the first time that’s happened. Good. This is getting better.
Or maybe it’s just some form of Stockholm syndrome, who knows.