In episode one Tamaki Mari –our heroine– despairing of her eventless high school life met Kobuchizawa Shirase who wanted to go to Antarctica to find her missing mother. But since we have four school girls going to Antarctica, so episode two and three of Yorimoi are about getting the band together.
Episode two starts where episode one left off, with Kimari and Shirase in Hiroshima, going on a tour of the ship for the upcoming expedition to Antarctica, before discussing the financial realities of going to Antarctica, mainly needing to pay for a plane ticket to Fremantle Australia, where the expedition would leave from. So Kimari starts looking for a job and after some difficulties finds one at the local convience store near hear school. Meanwhile Kimari’s friend Megumi has done some research on the proposed expedition that shows it might actually not happen due to financial problems. When Kimari asks Shirase about it, it leads to a short falling out between them, which is luckily quickly resolved.
And it’s thanks to this argument that Miyake Hinata, Kimari’s coworker at the convience store, gets involved. Having overheard them earlier, she asks Kimari about their plans and decides to join them. She and Kimari hit it off immediately, sharing the same sort of humour and having the same sort of outgoing personality, as opposed to the much more serious seeming Shirase. Unlike Kimari though, who is a bit airheaded and inclined to go along with the flow, Hinata hides a much determined, adventurous personality behind her happy go lucky exterior. She deliberately dropped out of high school (mandatory education in Japan only covering up to middle school) and started working, but still planning to go to college, having already gotten her high school certificate. As such, she’s less inclined to just follow Shirase’s lead, more inclined to challenge her when her plans are …less than well thought out.
Such as Shirase’s plan to infiltrate the expedition’s meetup, draw the attraction of one of the male members and seduce him into smuggling them aboard. Hinata and Kimari go along with the idea, but their skepticism is quickly justified when Shirase is spotted by one of the female expedition members. One hilarious chase scene later and Shirase and co are explaining themselves to the two expedition members, with things turning serious as Shirase explains again how she wants to find her mother there. I like how well Yorimoi balances its general upbeat lightheartedness with that undertone of sorrow and grief Shirase is occassionally caught up in. It doesn’t dwell on it, but it’s there.
All in all this was a very strong episode, that managed to pack a lot into it, from Kimari getting serious about going to Antarctica with Shirase, Hinata joining and Shirase putting her seduction in motion, only to see it fail and Hirata and Kimari stripping her of her leadership as a result. When I first watched it I was a bit disappointed with this episode, finding the whole seduction thing a bit too anime for my liking, but rewatching a few times to write this, I got more and more impressed with it. The same also goes for episode three, which I also had mixed feelings about after first viewing, but which was much more impressive having seen it a second time.
Because episode three not only introduced Shiraishi Yuzuki, the final member of the team, but her introduction also served as the deus ex machina to get the girls onto the expedition. Yuzuki has already been induced into the expedition because Yuzuki is an idol and having her onboard is good publicity. She comes looking for Shirase to trade places with her, as Yuzuki actually doesn’t want to go to Antarctica, but rather wants to go to school like a normal girl. Unfortunately her mother & manager interferes before they can actually go ahead with the swap, but fortunately she is willing to recommend that Shirase and co go along with Yuzuki as her companions, if they can convice her to go.
Yuzuki turns out to be a bit of an anime cliché: the lonely high school idol who is too busy to be able to make friends. When Kimari and co meet up with her to try and convince her to go on the expedition, she ends up pouring out her heart to them about trying to make friends and how she always failed to do so. Which prompts Kimari to hug her, saying she understood how she feels. Yuzuki doesn’t believe her because clearly these three are best friends, right? In any case, she’s so impressed by them and especially Kimari that she dreams about them coming to rescue her. As indeed they do the next morning, or at least take her to Tokyo, to visit the polar exploration museum, before she has to go to her idol job. It’s enough to get her to agree to join the expedition.
On the one hand I didn’t like the idol ex machina used here to get Shirase and co a place on the expedition, but on the other it means that the rest of the series can concentrate on them getting ready for and then finally going on the expedition, rather than having to spent more episodes trying to be accepted. It helps that it’s a fairly realistic solution. One other thing that stuck with me from this episode was the scene with Shirase and Hinata going home on the train together, having a little heart to heart of their own, with Shirase admitting she’s a bit selfish and Hinata accepting that. It’s the first scene in which they’re together without Kimari there, showing they can be friends together without her too. That’s something which tends to be overlooked in anime sometimes, friendships between multiple people that don’t depend on one central figure.
Altogether these were two strong episodes that packed in a lot beyond just getting the band together, episode three especially. The quality and sense of humour of the first episode was kept and with the next episode promising to get into the nitty gritty of training for the expedition, I can’t wait.
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