In which laundry is done, childhood friends deny they’re romantically interested in each other and a poor little rich boy is in search of his middle school love.
Kirei ni Shite Moraemasu ka
Kinme Wakana runs Kinme cleaning, a laundry located in Atami, a smallish sea resort town. She takes an intense pleasure in cleaning laundry. (Sometimes too intense: there was one weird moment when a high school boy dropped off some clothing to be washed and Kinme got all flustered because his shoe had a little nick in it she needed to fix there and then). Based on a manga by Hattori Mitsuru, from what I remember reading it, the manga had an incredible sense of place and was a little bit horny for its protagonist. Both have been translated faithfully into the anime. This first episode was mostly about showing Kinme’s daily routine. It’s slow and contemplative and honestly, a little bit boring. What saves it is the beautiful animation and Kinme herself, who is exactly the kind of black haired pony tailed big sister type I like. From reading the manga I know there’s going to be an actual plot about how she ended up running the laundry and why her memories sort of stop two years ago, so it won’t be all watching her get a stubborn stain out of an old lady’s favourite shirt.
Osananajimi to wa Love Comedy ni Naranai
A classic case of having your cake and eating it too, as this romcom series has its romcom protagonist deny he’s in a romcom even as his two childhood friends get him in all sort of romcom shenanigans. The first climbs into his bed through the bedroom window, flashes her panties at him and rubs her breasts against any unguarded bodypart of his. The other does the classic tsundere move of calling him a pervert and a virgin as she dares him to kiss her. They both clearly want to get in his pants, but all he’s worried about is that they discover he’s horny for them and he’s determined to take that secret to his grave. It’s all very silly and the show seems to think that shouting about cliches is automatically funny but I can’t help but like it. Nothing you haven’t seen before but it’s done with some energy and verve at least. The opening promises two more childhood friends to join the harem as well, so that’s something to look forward to.
Mayonaka Heart Tune
Poor little rich kid Arisu was infatuated by the internet radio streams of “Apollo”, a girl his age, back in middle school. She abruptly stopped broadcasting and to find her again, he enrolled in the high school she hinted at she would go to too. Now he’s asking every girl in the just recently gone co-ed Furin High School to tell him they love him, so he can hear what their voice sounds like, that having been Apollo’s end of broadcast sign-off. He has no success until he hears the first broadcast from the broadcast club: one of the four girls there has to be Apollo, but which one? For whatever reason Apollo keeps her silence so he has no choice but to join the club and hunt for clues… Another somewhat cliched harem show, but Arisu is just the right amount of self confident asshole to be interesting. The girls so far are little more than stereotypes, but I expect that will change in the next few episodes.
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