The rise of a new criminal called Poison Gas Jack that targets those of the Commonwealth has risen and its up to the girls to find this man and stop him. The girls deduce that poison seeping into the perpetrator’s army clothes, all they have to do is find the man’s uniform and do a quick test to identify his uniform. To do that, the girls, including Princess this time, take on jobs at a laundry mill.
Compared to last episode’s depressing mood, this episode was a lot more happier. It starts off disheartening when we see the squalid working conditions with the gears and machines in horrible condition and the entire warehouse just being an unorganized mess. One particular girl is always tripping, the washing machines are dirty and give out easily, and the irons when used too much can cause a mini fire which we had saw. The women and girls (very young girls unfortunately) take constant breaks, and Chise thinks it’s because they’re lazy, but it’s because if they overwork the machines they’ll just break down, so the most they can do is an hour, then a break, then probably another hour or so.
Even though this episode had all the girls, this was a nice episode for Chise. She made a little friendship with Marilla, one of the veterans of the mill. Chise puts her everything into her work and wants efficiency and doesn’t like how the women work but comes to understand quickly why they can’t do more. When Princess buys the mill from the foreman before it would go bankrupt by a very familiar character, that for some reason Dorothy didn’t recognize last episode? It’s then the girls completely tune up the machines and other equipment and make the floor more organized, where the ladies finish their weekly load of soldier uniforms. Dorothy and the others give the rest of the ladies the idea to make more money by washing more laundry and so some of them visit miners and offer to wash their work clothes. Chise also gets the ladies riled up by teaching them a more fun and “efficient” way of doing laundry by teaching them a song to sing while they work, so they can work in unison. Chise again shows pride in her culture and officially befriends Marilla by giving her a headband. Chise is a strict person, but also an incredibly caring person. She showed major concern over the ladies and their working condition, and also found a way to help them with their work. She’s the type of girl that favors hard work, no matter the task, and wants others to do the same. She has a big heart, and in the end as she wrapped her headband, she believed the women would be fine without them because they’ve grown stronger. Chise is just really sweet! I also love how she just loves her own culture and shares it with others as we’ve seen before in her introductory episode when she helped that child that had fallen on the train tracks and sang a song to help his pain go away, a song from Japan. Even in a country she knows nothing about, with some people thinking she’s just odd, she doesn’t care and continues loving her culture, and I just find that admirable about her.
This episode was less about finding the killer (though they certainly did) but was about showing us the daily lives of the people in London. Horrible working conditions in this time was the norm, women only doing “woman jobs” was also the norm, but it also showed us just how caring our group of spies are. Sure, you can say that the only reason why Princess bought the mill and improve the working conditions was to make their mission a lot easier, but we all know that they have good hearts. They’re good girls. 🙂
It was a charming and sweet episode. The show was getting a little rocky for me but so far it’s made me love characters a lot more than I did before, such as Dorothy and Chise. They’re each getting their own personalities and getting fleshed out so I’m having more fun with this show. Also, delinquent Ange with the elaborate backstory was completely unnecessary but oh so hilarious that it also speaks to her character.
