Jiggle
For some reason, this episode adds jiggle physics (though minor) when there was very little to none prior. There are also several sequences that are well animated, which leads me to believe that a lot of budget and attention was given to this episode.
Riho is fine after the scene at the end of last episode, and gets a bit smug after hearing how worried Hayato was after her collapse.
Riho’s hubris quickly becomes jealousy after seeing a few girls taking an interest in Hayato. She quickly moves to disperse the crowd of girls, and spurns Hayato after he asks her how she’s feeling.
Riho’s natural charisma is remarked upon by Hayato, which leads to a discussion about her. Shiragiku mentions that she’s exactly the same in college, and that she can’t think of anyone that doesn’t like her. Despite this, Riho never talks about herself or her past.
The troublemakers that trashed the Cafe’s stand earlier in the season show up and cause some more trouble. Ami is assigned the responsibility of taking care of any hooligans, so she decides to don a few slasher movie masks and provide the most obnoxious service to ward them away. After the hooligans leave, Ami says Hayato was feeling a bit down after being told off by Riho, but this just causes Riho to get excited again.
This means that Riho earns what she has sewn once more after growing jealous seeing another group of flocking to Hayato.
As you can see above, this is Chapter 28. The previous 1/3rd of the episode was Chapter 24, so obviously they’re grabbing major service segments from other chapters and putting them in earlier than they would be, probably to space out the service.
I don’t think this is a 1:1 shot from the manga to the anime, and in fact, there was quite a few manga panels that didn’t make it into the anime unfortunately.
This shot of Akane was interesting to me – to this point, she was clearly the “mature” girl of the bunch, so I wouldn’t have expected her to have the cutesy pouty face. Maybe this is another sign of her growing affection for Hayato?
But overall, this whole part of the episode is mostly what it seems to be – standard beachtime fun with half nude college girls. What’s not to love? Though it is worth mentioning that Akane was quite forward with Hayato; blatantly mentioning that the new song she’s writing is a love song, and asking Hayato if he’d like to hear the lyrics.
Riho’s sociability continues to impress customers, but Hayato is less impressed because she’s pushing herself too hard. This causes Hayato to angrily tell her to take a break, or risk being fired.
At first glance, you may think that Riho (or any of the other girls) was being scouted to star in a few JAV’s, but they were just interested in featuring the cafe on their news program, and they were particularly interested in talking with the girl who has been making a name for herself, Riho. This turns out to be a bad thing however, as the TV producer knows Riho having worked with her in the past. Turns out that Riho was something of a child star, but “disappeared,” and after everyone around her starts to see the resemblance, Riho runs off in a panic.
Riho’s past (at least some of it) is finally explained. Riho was a great child actress that eventually faded from the spotlight, replaced by another “new hotness.” Her parents were never onboard with the whole deal, and it’s implied that this was the cause of her parents’ divorce, but that part isn’t explained in full. I expect that to return later as more of Riho’s past is explored. But anyway, Riho laments the fact that all she got out of her brief acting career was a broken family, but Hayato counters by saying that it is because of her personality (that was very much sculpted by necessity to survive in a TV environment) that the cafe is doing as well as it is. Riho is overcome with emotion after Hayato tells her to take it easy yet again, and says she never wants to leave the cafe.
After this episode, we are through to the end of Chapter 26. I looked ahead and I think we’ll be getting a massive bathhouse service section in a future episode, perhaps 12. It looks great, so look forward to it.
