First off, how dare they add such important scenes into what boils down to the hot springs episode and also, aren’t we like, done with this trope?
While it tries to blow some new life into the trope by having the girls accidently walk in the guys bath (due to Paca’s meddling), it all just boils down to the same thing with Karin going all classic 90’s tsundere on all their asses and beating the crap out of the guys. So really, in the end it doesn’t do anything new with it.
So let’s talk about the scenes that worked in this chaos.
Kaikoku’s scenes for sure, he got the information from Yuzu’s room during the last task and brought it to his room. Looking it over, he notices that there is information on all of them except for Akatsuki and Yuzu. Which matches up to what we already know, that they have some kind of connection to all of this given the picture in her closet.
So naturally, when the next scene Yuzu and Kaikoku seem to be having a serious talk. One would naturally assume that it would be about the files and what her and Akatsuki involvement in all of this is. Nope, they’re debating color.
Red for Anya
Purple for Makino
White for Zakuro
Blue for Akatsuki
Yellow for Himiko and pink for Karin.
The two of them, black.
What is this color conversation you might ask? Sentai ranger colors? Colors that represent them as a person? Nope, the discussion was about underwear colors. How…did they even get on this topic? It was a perfect cop out for a semi-serious looking conversation from the distance. It’s something I would expect out of Yuzu for sure, but somehow, with his personality and everything going on. It seemed really out of left field for Kaikoku.
Of course, so would of been having such a serious conversation as discussing what he found in such a public place. If he truly was going to approach Yuzu about it, it would most likely be in a place where there was little chance of the others overhearing them.
Then there is the end of the episode with Kaikoku, in his room after the incident with Karin in the outdoor bath. When he returns to look at the information gathered on the subjects and decides to look at his own paper, noticing immediately on the second page a note about his grandfathers condition.
‘Critical.’
Of course, he gets upset and immediately storms out of his room and heads up the tower with every intent to pick a bone with Paca. He goes to a forbidden floor, katana at the ready. However, he doesn’t make it for a fight and the next he wakes up is in the white room.
Something of immense interest to me, is the bracelet he’s wearing. It’s exactly the same as the one that Zakuro found, the one with his sisters name engraved on it. So, does this mean Zakuro’s sister was once confined to the white room? In that case, where is she now? Is she alive, or did she die in there completely alone?
The rest of the episode was basically standard. “Oh, awkward opposite gender in the bathhouse” kind of hijinks. Honestly, I think I would of enjoyed it better if they had of been able to pull off Akatsuki’s plan of screaming “aaaahhhh pervert.” at the girls, as a complete reversal of the trope. Since, it was them that walked in on the guys to begin with.
I did get a slight kick out of how traumatized that Akatsuki still is by Karin punching him back in the first episode. I also couldn’t help but giggle at Makino just laying there and sleeping on the rock in the middle of the bath for half of the episode.