The thought of Kyoko telling scary stories is scary enough in itself.

What They Say:
Ikeda Chizuru… Chitose’s younger twin sister…Despite the summer heat, my sister diligently performs her student council duties without a single complaint. I knew she could do it. She’s amazing. As usual, she works with Sugiura-san. No matter how hot it gets, they’re always together… (drool) Oh, my sister’s laughing happily with Sugiura-san… (gush)…Hm? …She’s back again. Why does she always interfere with my sister and Sugiura-san… Don’t come over here! Blow yourself up!

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The fun of scary stories tends to enter most shows at one point or another when dealing with high school characters and Yuru Yuri is no exception. This one actually has some good fun with it simply because the girls are quirky enough in their own way to tell tales that definitely fit their personality while also trying to be scary. Having Yui talk about opening a door to have someone creepily grab you is one thing, it’s another as Kyoko tells it where an older woman comes out and starts talking with you. Or how Chinatsu deals with a story having her walking through the woods and coming across a creepy woman who, contrary to looks, simply helps her find her way home.

The girls don’t keep to one subject too long though as they diverge elsewhere and we have them talking about things they’d like to be able to do, such as being able to fly, to change form and as Yui does it, to warp. Kyoko is comical though as she comes up with a burglar alarm power that basically has her whole body turn into an alarm when someone tries to mug her. Things like this and how they try to keep conversation going while relaxing for the day has a lot of fun to it. Though the ghost stories and the like permeate the episode in different ways, they also spend time talking about other things which helps to give it a bit more of a sense of reality because it’s not so narrowly focused.

The latter half of the episode deals with Nishigaki as she’s come back from a bit of time off due to an incident that the president deemed significant. Since she’s the inventing type, she causes a lot of problems and her motto is that invention is made better by explosions and the like. She’s a fun creative type that gets into a whole lot of trouble easily by just playing with anything and everything that she can get her hands on. Of course, she does it with such a playful and outgoing personality, plenty talkative, that it’s even more amusing. That she spends a lot of time with Matsumoto during this who barely says a world and blushes the moment that Nishigaki tousles her hair just makes it priceless.

In Summary:
Yuru Yuri has some fun here to be sure, but it feels like one of their weaker episodes overall even with the cast of characters used to tell the tale here. There are cute moments and some things that make you laugh along the way, and the whole scary stories thing has a really amusing note to it when it gets back to it at the end, but mostly it just feels like it’s kind of there. The charm is in the characters themselves and they do largely succeed here, but it’s not a laugh out loud episode like we’ve had before and it doesn’t focus much on characters I feel like I want to see more of. When it keeps to the club members and not the student council members I find myself getting into it more. Nishigaki adds some fun here as well simply by her presence and personality but it’s not enough to make the second half work well enough.

Grade: B-

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.