This episode continued right from where the last one ended as we see the inn our main cast resides in is in deep shit. Lacking the four girls the inn is short in manpower and is not able to compensate for it. Of course, Ohana and the other girls help out.
While the part of helping each other out was heartwarming but a little bit cheesy, the parts dealing with Yuina shined brightly as they further fleshed out her character.
As it turns out my assumptions made last time came pretty close to the truth, although I’d now say that the main characteristic of Yuina is not her way of letting nothing coming close to her but her being half-hearted about everything while being a rather spoiled brat.
It’s not so much about Ohana being the perfect wife or wanting to be a waitress which some other bloggers think. In fact, this is way off. It’s more about the way Yuina thinks about life and work in general. You only have to connect to information to come to this conclusion: the fact that she never worked and the first career choices she comes up with in the bathroom scene.
Her career choices perfectly fit Yuina’s character because every single one of them is at the artsy end of the spectrum: Designer, creator and artist. What’s the typical cliché surrounding them? You don’t have to work that much, you can be creative, there’s no pressure and so on. And this couldn’t further from the truth. But it’s the perfect naïve choice for Yuina because she never worked and doesn’t want to work (i.e. working hard to achieve something). Compare this to Ohana who works her butt off on almost each and every occasion.
Because of all this the center and the highlight definitely was the scene in the bathroom with Yuina and her fiancée. You can feel how with each minute the half-heartedness and the wall surrounding Yuina crumbles. I think it’s the first time where she realizes she cannot be sure to get something anyway. In this case her husband-to-be. She learns that hard work can be fulfilling and that hard work can be fun, which is absolutely true. But for her the final nail to her halfhearted coffin is the second her fiancée calls everything off and mentions Ohana as his perfect choice.
It’s this moment when she’s serious for the first time ever because she’s forced into a corner she cannot talk or play her way out of. For the first time she sees the limit of being carefree and not putting your heart on something – in this case work (which I interpret as a symbol/substitute for everything). You can see her change but more importantly hear her change because in this particular moment her voice is serious and doesn’t have this playful intonation we hear almost every other time.
Although she later returns to her usual way of dealing with things there’s a slight change noticeable so I’m really intrigued how her character arc will turn out later.
