Amaama to Inazuma Episode 1 (First Impression)

I’ve been healed.

My skin has been cleared, my debts have been paid, and I’ve been purified. This is one of the most pure and healing shows I have seen. Last season’s Shounen Maid made me happy and warm. This show does the same but ten times more. Tsumugi is the sweetest thing and Kouhei is a pretty great guy, too.

My goodness what a wholesome show. We need more shows like these. I love watching horror shows, and mystery shows, and ones with action and violence and blood and guts flying everywhere. But there are times when I want to sit down and watch something like this. A good slice of life show with likeable characters. Nothing too wacky, just sweet and pleasing. Those are kind of tough for me to find because they can end up being too slow and make me bored, like…Flying Witch. No offense, I’m sorry. Shounen Maid was a good one. Another show was Barakamon, that was fun. I guess what we’re not familiar with seeing is kids in anime. Kids actually being kids and being in realistic, and unfortunate, life situations. What this show and the other two I mentioned are young children losing one or both of their parents, where afterwards an adult comes into their life who becomes their family and parent figure. The difference here is that Tsumugi actually has one of her parents, her father. (Granted, Chihiro in Shounen Maid had his uncle Madoka but they were strangers.)

We just don’t see much anime about parents, let alone single parents because parents are an inconvenience in anime. We can’t get plot with parents around! So it’s nice seeing something like this, especially about a single father. And so we’re thrown into the life in the Inuzuka household. We learn from one of Kouhei’s collegues that it’s been six months since his wife died. We don’t get the reason. He’s a teacher at a school and after he drops Tsumugi off at her kindergarten, he doesn’t see her until much later in the evening, where a babysitter picks her up. He doesn’t have the time, energy, or even the skills to actually cook up something for his daughter, so he buys boxed lunches and frozen meals from the store. These are regular meals, and Tsumugi eats them while her eyes are glued onto the TV where she watches her favorite magical girl show. While she’s eating, Kouhei is either grading quizzes at the table or just doing something else, so they don’t really eat together. But even when they don’t see each other for awhile each day, that doesn’t mean they have a distant relationship. They’re actually quite close. Tsumugi jumps on him, kisses his cheek, they both clean the home together, and he sings the Magi-Girl theme with her. He’s a great father!

It’s obvious that he really loves her. He tries his best to be the best father that he can be, but you can see that he struggles. He always turns down his colleagues when it comes to parties because he needs to get home to his daughter. He sometimes leaves work late and rushes home. He also regrets that he can’t give his daughter a proper meal. He tried cooking once but that didn’t go well. He does his absolute best to make her happy, and he does that by taking her flower viewing. It’s then that they meet Kotori, one of his students. They see that she’s crying, eating a rice ball alone. Tsumugi talks to her asking if the riceball was really good, and it looked like she wanted to try one. Feeling guilty for not being able to share, Kotori hands Kouhei the business card of her family’s restaurant. Ever since then, Tsumugi has gotten the need for different food, real food not in a box. Kouhei goes into action once he comes home to seeing Tsumugi literally drooling on the TV screen when watching a cooking show with meat.

Kouhei takes Tsumugi to the restaurant but is disappointed when he learns that the girl’s mother isn’t there so they’re closed. But she changes her mind and says she’ll make rice for them. This show made me smile a lot, but it also made me emotional for two different reasons. Kouhei’s face, with tears in his eyes, when Tsumugi ate the rice struck my heart. Seeing his daughter so happy eating something simple like rice made him realize that he wants to make his daughter happy all the time, with delicious food. It doesn’t matter that it was just rice, it was homemade rice. At the end of the episode, he promises Tsumugi that he’ll make delicious food for her and she’s thrilled. The episode ends with Kotori asking her teaching awkwardly to have dinner with her, and Tsumugi has no idea why it’s so awkward. Aww.

I say Kouhei is a great father because he does his best to preserve his daughter’s happiness, but I can see trouble later. After he walked in to Tsumugi watching the cooking show, she told her father to write a letter to her mother to send them meat. Um…wait. Uh oh. She thinks…her mother is alive. And that she’s probably traveling somewhere. Oh no….ohhh no. That’s not good. I can see a lot of crying from both Tsumugi and me later on when the truth is revealed, and it most likely will be somehow. And I won’t look forward to that. Not at all. T_T

With all the images of food and eating in the opening and ending, I’m guessing this show is going to revolve around food. Well, that’s fine! This show…is just everything I wanted. Wholesome, pure, cute, just so CUTE. Tsumugi is a joy. She’s a simple kid, like any other kid she can’t put on her clothes right, she gets excited being able to read “restaurant” on a card, she gets sleepy at 7:30pm, and she asks her dad if he went “poopsies”. It’s so sweet and I love this show already. I’m just so…happy.

Possibility of watching: Guaranteed

Possibility of blogging: Yes!!!