Amaama to Inazuma Episode 4: Bell Peppers Suck

Tsumugi made the best faces this episode oh my goodness I love this girl.

She’s such a funny little girl. And this episode was dedicated to her and her distaste for bell peppers. This is a cultural thing, where in Japan bell peppers seem to be the broccoli of the Western world (or at least in North America). In the West we don’t really eat giant chunks of bell pepper unless it’s just part of a dish, but it’s mostly used for flavoring. But just like in America where children don’t want to eat broccoli, kids in Japan don’t want to eat their peppers. And I don’t blame them, because I hate them too. It’s just like you said, Sensei, it’s okay to go through life without eating peppers, I’m doing alright myself.

But yes, this episode’s theme is vegetables. Moving on from last week’s emotional episode, we went for a very comedic one. Tsumugi hates bell peppers. Kouhei got plenty of vegetables from his coworker and from his mother, so he has a mountain of vegetables and doesn’t know what to do. But he has an idea and serves some of the veggies with the burger meat he had made, but when Tsumugi saw that he put them in bell pepper, she was instantly displeased and her faces were hilarious. She took a bite but she ended up crying and didn’t eat. So now Kouhei’s dilemma is how he’s going to make his daughter eat her vegetables, and he ends up asking people like Kotori and the other mothers at Tsumugi’s preschool. I think we can all remember a time when we were children and had a vegetable our parents tried to make us eat but we just wouldn’t and we’d scream and cry. And our parents would try to hide the vegetable in our food by chopping them into tiny pieces. That’s what Kouhei tried to do, but Tsumugi was smart and found them and separated them on her plate.

So he asks Kotori what they should do. And again, the second half of the episode is dedicated to cooking the new dish of the week. This time it’s a gratin where they’ll incorporate as many vegetables and they’ll hide the peppers in with the rest, and cover it all with a sauce so Tsumugi can’t see everything that’s in it.

The two are very careful when it comes to the peppers. Kotori’s idea was also to make the cooking really fun, I guess to make vegetables fun. But you can’t fool me, Kotori! Veggies are not fun. I’m not that much of a picky eater, I love trying new things, but…I don’t really like vegetables. The whole time they were cooking and adding vegetables, I knew that I would never eat that gratin. I do like potatoes, carrots, corn, asparagus, and a couple other things but for the most part I just do not like vegetables. I almost died when Tsumugi added all those tomatoes, I hate them so much…

Yeah, I get it, vegetables are good for you. But they’re gross. >:T

Okay, so obviously I’m not a good role model. Anyway, they make the dish and they love it and Tsumugi made her father eat her peppers and it was hilarious. Tsumugi was very funny and silly as usual, doing a weird dance when chanting her magic spell so the sauce wouldn’t clump, and just her faces alone made the episode. We also saw that Kotori actually does have a friend. I thought it was funny when her friend came in and asked if Kotori had made any new friends and Kotori just said “Nope!” nonchalantly. I wonder why they don’t hang out more at school though.

We see so far that this show has taken on a formula. The first half is dedicated to the drama, or at least the conflict, and then the second half is when the three characters (or should I saw two?) whip up a new dish, and then they eat. Personally, I don’t find it boring at all because they balance it all very well, and while they’re cooking they always add something there to entertain us like Tsumugu being cute and funny. Though I would like it if they could break from this formula for awhile, just so we can see something else. I know that this show is going to be based around food and cooking, but I feel like we might not learn about the characters that much. I’d actually like to see more about Kotori and her friend, for instance. But don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying this show a lot.