Last episode on Hanasaku Iroha was the culture festival, where Minchi basically came out and professed her love to Tohru, and he basically rejected her. You could argue he’s being dense, but it is said that there are none so blind as those who won’t see. He’s not interested in Minchi as anything more than a colleague, or possibly has concerns about how unprofessional it would be to get romantically involved with his coworker in the kitchen. I’d suggest that she’s too young for him, only he blatantly has the hots for Ohana who is the same age. Poor Minchi. I wonder if that’s all the closure we’ll get on this romance or if we’ll pursue it further in episode 21 of Hanasaku Iroha.
…thirty minutes pass…
The confrontation in the baths kind of reminded me of that scene from the movie Eastern Promises.
Finally we’re getting the love triangle brought out into the open! I’ve been asking for this for more than a full anime season now, I guess my patience finally paid off. Nothing like a wedding to make every single single person sit up and remember that they are supposed to fall in love. Even Tomoe was making eyes at Ren! I wonder if those feelings are mutual, he was spotted buying a flashy leather jacket earlier, clearly he’s trying to impress someone. And Tomoe would be a good choice for a person to impress.
I feel kind of bad for Enishi, though. The poor guy is a joke character, and now even his wedding, which should be all about him (or at least, about his bride), is being used just as the backdrop for the real characters to have their own romantic entanglements against. And on top of that, he’s being disinherited! I mean, I can understand the landlady’s decision there. If you gave the inn to him he would just wreck it. He and his bride are incompetent, they have never once made a good decision about running the inn. But still, it’s harsh.
But back on the subject of important characters who actually matter… Ohana seemed pretty ambivalent about the idea that Tohru might be interested in her. Her thoughts on the subject were all about Minchi’s feelings, and Tohru’s feelings. She didn’t consider her own feelings at all. That might be evidence that she doesn’t have feelings for Tohru, but she strikes me as the sort of person who is so externally focused, so concerned with making others happy, that she doesn’t pay enough attention to herself. That’s what caused her problems with Kou-chan, now that I think about it: she couldn’t tell him how she felt, because she didn’t know how she felt. At the beginning of the show I classified her as “introspective”, but I think that might have been a mistake. It’ll be interesting to see if she can handle Tohru any better than she did Kou-chan.
suntzuanime 