What They Say:
Let’s Go Camping! \ Rin Rin and the High School Girl
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With some good fun involving the humans recently and a look at Penguin’s problems that went to hilarious levels when it came to Penko, shifting gears is pretty much required here. Seeing how Grizzly handled things recently when he thought Polar Bear had died has helped to get him to want to reconnect with his friend a bit more so a camping trip is on the radar for them. And any time Grizzly shows up, it’s just awesome since he’s full of a particular sense of style. And his manner in dealing with others feels like it’s odd since he’s a bit gruff but friendly. Except when it comes to Penguin since he just tweaks him constantly, getting under his skin with ease in a way that just agitates Penguin all the more. Which, of course, is the goal.
Getting their camping on, having Penguin, Polar Bear, Grizzly and Pand out together in the woods at a campground is great fun. The experienced campers get into things easily enough with catching fish, getting the cooking on and generally having fun, though Polar Bear does got a little over the top at times. Amusingly, it turns out that Grizzly and Penguin are the most sane about things in a way as they go about doing what needs done, making them an unlikely pairing as we learn that Penguin has a lot of practical knowledge.
The second half goes in a very different direction where after it has the hilarious moment involving Panda complaining about how hard a two day work week is and that Penguin really ought to get a job himself, it shifts to Rintarou, aka Rin Rin. With his plan to continue to get close to the pandas, he employs a high school girl to go with him to visit them, leading the young woman to believe that he has an interest in her like she does in him. There’s some good confusion that comes along the way but the whole thing feels weak across the board. While I like the things that Rin Rin has gotten involved with before, especially when he ended up at Panda’s home, here he just comes across as disconnected from what his actions are all about and potentially a bit creepy in some really big ways.
In Summary:
Polar Bear Cafe has a strong first half with a lot of fun as Grizzly and Penguin manage to find some common ground. Even though it kind of doesn’t work out for Penguin, we get to see him being smart in how he deals with Grizzly and thankful that they did find this ground. The second half with Rin Rin is less amusing overall and borderline creepy if not for the fact that we know he’s really harmless (so far!) when it comes to the high school girl he deals with. The bookend material for the segment are the best as we see Panda and Penguin chatting it up and having fun together, but that’s a very minor part overall for the whole arc.
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.
0 comments