Flying Witch – 04

Someone had a baaaaaad idea

Drinking can get you in trouble.

Sakura Matsuri

See? Everyone takes this picture

It’s always nice when a show that is mostly atmosphere ramps up the atmosphere for a special occasion. Even more so when they use an aside conversation from the previous episode to tie the continuity in to the current episode. After talking about going to the cherry blossom festival last week, this week is the cherry blossom festival, and true to his word, Kei takes Makoto and Chinatsu on a weekday. This is a good plan at Hirosaki Castle, because it’s one of the most popular hanami spots in Japan so you can imagine how packed it would be come the weekend.

In you go!

But for now it’s rather quiet, and the locals are enjoying the normal matsuri attractions, like the Haunted House. Japanese obakeyashiki are different from the gore attractions in the west, and knowing that it’s certainly not surprising that Kei is not that interested in it, although it might be more scary to have Makoto navigating through it, since she gets them lost. But it was cute the way that Makoto and Chinatsu ganged up on Kei, and it seemed like they all had a good time. And Chinatsu even won at the usually rigged string lottery, and just can’t help but brag about it, leading to meeting a new person.

Chinatsu now makes easy friends with animals

Be Careful What You Eat

I loved this exchange: “Oh, it’s just like witchcraft!”
“Yeah, it’s really like witchcraft!”
“Uhhh, I am a witch.”

This effect was perfect: cute, beautiful scale, pretty, and completely appropriate

The mysterious fortune teller turns out to be Inukai, who has quite the story involving Makoto’s sister Akane, some chocolate, and just a little bit of misremembering. She’s stayed mad at Akane for the whole year since being turned into a dog girl, and now that she’s found Makoto, it’s time to get the spell reversed! Except that Makoto has no more way to contact Akane than Inukai does. But Makoto will try her best to reverse the spell with plenty of exhortations how she’s not just doing this to try out the spell, or anything like that at all. It certainly looked like she made it work, with all the cute konpeito candy and the multi-colored little explosion.

Oops

Well, Akane’s not that far away. (And look how Kenny sits on the broom! OMG, it’s perfect!)

It didn’t work. Oh well, guess Inukai will have to wait for Akane who might be a while… or she might show up right now. Completely unpredictable, she is. And she is able to jog Inukai’s memory about what actually happened, and confess that she hasn’t found a way to reverse it. But the most important part is that now there’s another new friend for Makoto and Chinatsu, and who knows, maybe Kei will actually decide that he likes both forms of Inukai enough to ask her out.

Inukai’s ‘other’ look, although I don’t know if one is cuter than the other

This episode made us a great new friend, and told another great story. It also showed us another familiar in Al. Something of interest in this show is JC Staff’s strategy of getting almost complete newbies for the main roles, and getting really big names for the minimal roles. With Minami Shoda as Makoto, Shinsuke Sugawara as Kei, and Eri Suzuki as Chinatsu, you have three VA’s with about as little experience as you can get (Eri Suzuki actually does have a main parts, as Sanae in Rokujouma no Shinryakusha, but that’s it). Even the supporting cast, with Kana Aoi as Akane and Mari Hino as Inukai have almost nothing in their body of work. But then you get to the bit parts and that’s where the big names show up: Ai Kayano as Chito, Ayane Sakura as Kenny, Ari Ozawa as Al, Kikuko Inoue as Nana, and Takahiro Sakurai as the Harbinger of Spring. That’s a lot of experience for just a few lines, most of them various animal noises. But it’s an interesting feel that the show has produced, with Chinatsu, Makoto, and Kei all feeling very natural and conversational, with just maybe that bit of raw and new to make them seem more like their characters. I really enjoy it.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!