Amaama to Inazuma Episode 2: Pork Soup and Restaurant Lights

Tsumugi is a treasure.

This week’s episode wasn’t as impactful as last week’s, but it was still equally as adorable and sweet. So what happened? This episode picked up where we left off with Kotori asking Kouhei to come to the restaurant more often and cook with her. He sees it as awkward, and he doesn’t think it’d be right for him and his daughter to come back. He doesn’t think her family would like it. Tsumugi immediately loves the idea, but Kouhei doesn’t budge.
I can understand why he feels that way. A teacher hanging around one of his female students looks very bad. There’s always been this fine line between teachers and students. Teachers are only there to teach their students and that’s it, they’re not supposed to create a relationship between them. Him seeing one of his students regularly outside of school would look bad, especially since she’s female. That’s why he can’t really accept her offer. But the fact that he even talked about this with one of his colleagues means that a part of him wants to accept, mainly for Tsumugi. Tsumugu is ecstatic at the idea and brings home a drawing she made at school of her, her father, and Kotori at her restaurant eating food. He only gets more conflicted, but he decides that he will only accept once he speaks with her mother. He finds Kotori eating bread alone and tells her that and asks her when her mother has free time, and Kotori immediately exclaims that at that very night her mother will be free. But when Kouhei and Tsumugi arrive, they’re surprised to find out that she isn’t there and it’s just Kotori.

Kotori intrigues me. Just from the first episode I could tell that she’s a really lonely girl. We learn that her parents divorced when she was in third grade and that she lives with her mother, who owns the restaurant. But we learn from Kotori that her mother is busy with other work, like her being a cooking expert on TV. Being on TV, I imagine that she’s hardly ever home. Kotori says the restaurant is almost always closed, so besides school, she doesn’t interact with much people. We see her alone a lot, like at the flower viewing, and again when she was eating bread alone in a secluded part of the school. She’s a gentle and sweet girl, but she always seems so unsure of herself. On top of that, she has a fear of knives. I don’t want to get too dark with this show and say there was abuse in her household that included kitchen knives and maybe her family situation is a lot worse than we know it, but we can make that guess? Or, go with the more typical route and guess that she tried cooking on her own once to be as good as her mom and she seriously hurt herself and now has a trauma against knives. Either way, I felt like that incident shaped her life. And seeing her how desperate she is to make Kouhei and Tsumugi cook with her just emphasizes how lonely she is. She wants any kind of company.

Kouhei and Kotori cooking together really does help both of them. For Kouhei, it’s him gaining the skills to make his young daughter delicious meals. And for Kotori, it’s to give her company. Kotori seems to really love her restaurant too, as we saw her name written under the wooden bar. Probably another reason why she’s having Kouhei cook with her is so she can learn how to cook better herself so one day she can run the restaurant herself because her mother is gone most of the time.

Kouhei trying hard was sweet to watch. The poor man can’t even cook an egg properly for the love of god. :/ That’s like one of the easiest things you can cook. But he’s trying, by making Tsumugi breakfasts with eggs and lunches with rice and weiners, although there is some frozen foods mixed in. But that’s okay, he’s working on it. One step at a time.

Tsumugi is as adorable as ever, and so are the others. We watched them make pork soup, and it was funny watching Kouhei shake so much holding a knife. That little cooking segment actually reminded me a little of Koufuku Graffiti, with them taking time to cook their food and making it look good. And then of course them eating it at the end while also describing how good it was. Minus the awkward foodgasms I hated. But, ahh, Kouhei getting all blushy and happy when Tsumugi said the soup was good. Oh dang it. :’) What a nice dad. After that, Kouhei agrees that they’ll come back to make the other stuff that they had planned to do, and Kotori and Tsumugi are thrilled. Yay!

I wonder if they’ll cook every episode. I also wonder if we’ll ever meet Kotori’s mom. I want to see her family relationship more closely and learn more about Kotori herself. Also, I see different characters in the opening so I’m excited to see how they’ll be related in the show. Also, wasn’t Tsumugi in the apron the cutest thing? Funny how Kotori had that apron ready for her?