The weather’s fantastic and the sun’s shining bright, so it’s the perfect day for our main trio to go for a picnic. Mina wants to go to a local her family used to go to when she was still alive, so although the location is a shorter trip than Reiji’d been planning on, it has a lot of nostalgic value for Mina. Therefore Mina wins – the lake it shall be.
Gallow’s coming along too, unfortunately. I was initially annoyed that he was kinda shoehorned into this episode because really, his entire schtick at present is that he’ll do anything to try to impress Noela. Win a fishing competition, train a new employee, whatever it takes. Thankfully she doesn’t appear to be changing her mind about Gallow, which I’m happy about because I wouldn’t want the Demon King’s bratty antics to reduce Noela to a stupid trope. She seems to tolerate Gallow now instead of actively dislike him, and that’s enough for me.
So yeah, Reiji and the others go to a nearby lake for a picnic. There’s no one else nearby, but maybe that’s because the nearby forest is infested with monsters??
Because this picnic is Gallow’s first picnic (haha, Reiji calling Gallow a hikikomori made me laugh xD), Reiji offers to teach him how to fish.
There’s a brief fanservice scene, which Reiji is discreet about because both Mina and Noela are younger than him. Gallow, however, gets a full on nose gusher at the sight of Noela in a bathing suit and becomes unable to continue fishing.
Reiji decides to fish on his own using his homemade jelly-based fish bait, and it’s not long before he hooks a huge fish! Except… it’s not a fish?! Yep Reiji hooks a water spirit with the appearance of a teenage girl. Her name is Vivi. :3
Vivi’s pretty adorable but it’s noticeable fairly quickly that she’s a pessimistic person. Very pessimistic. Since humans no longer visit her shrine, she’s very lonely and has little food to eat (she used to eat the townspeople’s offerings to survive). Vivi welcomes the company of Reiji and his friends but is wary of trusting them because if she trusts them, then she can get hurt again. It’s better to set a low bar for expectations because that reduces future pain.
But of course we’re talking about Reiji, Mina and Noela here, so we know they’d never intentionally do anything to hurt Vivi or any of their other friends. Little by little, they repeatedly remind her that they like spending time with her and they want to be her friend.
When Vivi accidentally warms up too much and “melts,” requiring that she be thrown back into the lake, Reiji offers to host a fishing competition between himself, Mina, Noela and Vivi. Gallow, who’s been pretty quiet since getting accidentally squished by Vivi earlier, has snuck himself into their competition and is participating on his own.
So the five friends spend the afternoon having a friendly competition, and while Mina and Noela still win by a very slim margin, everyone had fun. And that’s the most important thing right?
When Vivi expresses her sadness over missing her new friends because she still doubts that they will come visit her often, Reiji offers her a part-time job at his store. This bit made me giggle because it was cute, but I’m stuck in retail so Vivi’s outrage at being “only part-time” was also totally relatable. >_>
However, regardless of how many hours she works, Vivi’s “condition” (turning into a slime when her body temperature rises too high) will require some kind of solution because she can’t be turning into a puddle mid-transaction or conversation with a customer. Reiji remembers his cooling gel from a previous episode and that jar suddenly becomes Vivi’s new best friend. Success!
I’m surprised that Gallow was chosen to be Vivi’s new supervisor and show her the ropes of working at the pharmacy, as he’s still a relatively new employee himself. Gallow’s ready to assert himself as the dominant one over Vivi, until he remembers that Vivi is friends with Noela, and his temperament turns on a dime. At a moment’s notice, Gallow becomes very subservient to Vivi, which was… new. I imagine it still all goes back to Noela, ie perhaps Gallow wants Vivi to say nice things about him to Noela in the hopes that she will change her mind about him.
In the last segment of the episode, Anabel and Paula both return to the pharmacy to have a chat with Mina about getting some hair removal cream. I appreciated that the episode was rather vague about which part(s) of the body the cream was for, as in the real world there are multiple types of hair removal cream and some might up the show’s rating a little if Cheat Kusushi no Slow Life went into more detail. ^^;;
I think this last scenario was a great way to incorporate a life lesson for Noela and give her some important character development. See, she has a habit of getting into medicines that she’s not supposed to, just like a child. And, well, she gets into Reiji’s hair removal cream and loses all the fur on the end of her tail!
But just like always, Reiji saves the day by creating a tonic that promotes hair growth and healthy skin, and Noela’s tail fur grows back like it was never removed in the first place. Most importantly, Noela finally learns to NOT touch things that don’t belong to her. Just like how children sometimes do something and receive unintended consequences, which teaches them to not do that thing again.
So we’ve now met our entire cast as shown at the end of the ED theme sequence. I hope we get to see Ririka one more time, since Anabel and Paula have made a couple of small reappearances, and Elaine’s had a second half an episode involving her too. And although she’s not included in the big group photo, I’m ok with Feris not coming back again; she’s a bit hyper for me.
This episode made me realize that although Gallow’s definitely a part of the show’s supporting cast, I wish he’d just been included in a couple of episodes and then gone back to the Underworld. I guess he’s meant to be cute and his crush on Noela is supposed to be funny, but he’s still a kid and I find him more annoying than anything else. Maybe he could’ve worked a few shifts at the pharmacy and then his butler could’ve shown up to say thanks for giving the Demon King work experience, and then taken his young charge home.
But I don’t make the rules so I’m just going with the flow. Maybe by the end of the show Noela will admit that Gallow’s not that bad after all.
Vivi’s pretty cute. I like that she has a “color theme” like Mina (yellow and green) and Noela (grey and purple) do.
3 more episodes to go! Will Reiji be staying in this fantasy land? Any bets on whether he’s going to be spirited back to the human world?
