Sweetness and Lightning – 11
A wild Tsumugi appears!
It’s time for school events in this week’s Sweetness and Lightning.
Small Conflict
How do you make Mr. Galigali cuter?
Tsumugi’s class is putting on a Magi-Girl play, while Kotori’s class is setting up a crepe stand for their cultural festival. The episode begins with Tsumugi getting into a little disagreement with a friend over what roles they’ll have in the play. Hana wants to share the role of Yoshiko-chan with Tsumugi since they’re besties, but is taken aback when Tsumugi announces that she wants to play Mr. Galigali (the pink, fluffy sheep-pig) instead. So we end up with a case of kids being kids, as neither side is really at fault for the conflict which briefly strains their friendship. Luckily, the situation is defused pretty easily thanks to Kouhei’s efforts. Though that may be giving him too much credit, as I’m sure any Mr. Galigali costume would have broken the stalemate due to the goofy appearance of the mascot character. Even so, it’s the thought that counts. And we get to see just how much Kouhei thinks about and cares for his daughter, even when she herself doesn’t notice.
Kotori’s Debut
Kotori is the star of this crepe stand.
The other part of the episode brings what just might be the first proper interaction we’ve seen between Kotori and the rest of her class. It was quite heartwarming to see that the other students were actually curious about her and definitely more than friendly, as the usual scenario has loners like Kotori ignored by their class. The development may have come right at the tail end of the show, but I’m still glad to see Kotori so warmly accepted by her peers. Hopefully this means that her days of eating lunch (and snacks) alone are over. Anyway, the gist of the story here is that the girls in class who wanted to know more about Kotori rope her into creating a new menu item for their crepe stand; their rationale for putting her in charge being that she loves eating, of course. Kotori gladly accepts this task since she can’t resist the thought of delicious food, and eventually presents a recipe for sweet potato crepes with the help of the usual crew (Kouhei, Tsumugi, Shinobu, and Yagi) as guinea pigs.
Overall, I thought the parts about Kotori opening up to her classmates made up the better half of the episode. We’ve already seen plenty of Kouhei’s love for Tsumugi. At this point, I don’t think anyone doubts how much the single father genuinely cares for his daughter, though he may be clumsy about it at times. So it was a nice change of pace to see the focus switch to Kotori’s social relationships. Because all this time, our only view of her at school has been her hiding behind the building, munching on a snack or two. The introduction of best girl Shinobu helped lessen the feeling of her loneliness thanks to the best friend’s outgoing personality. But it was still sad to think of how isolated Kotori has been from even the people who sit next to her in class. With all this in mind, I have to say that this episode did much more to develop Kotori’s character than any other thus far. And I hope that we see more of the same moving on to the finale.
Making new friends.
About Sumairii
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
These are some very observant storytellers, especially when it comes to how children behave/act. They have so many opportunities to exaggerate that, and they do, but they always do it at just the right pitch. I’ve had kids do that to me…”you shouldn’t be talking about that thing…talk about my thing”. Good show.