Fukuyo Inn finds itself in a grave crisis as they are severely shorthanded in staff. Will they be able to surmount this challenge, or will the Kourin High School field trip be ruined?

What They Say:
“Sunny With a Chance of Beans”

Ohana uses her free day during the school trip to help out the Yunosagi Inn staff. While Yuina learns what it is like to work for the first time.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
We begin again with Yuina’s declaration that she has no interest in working at an inn, which gets a startled reaction from Yosuke. The tough situation for the Fukuyo Inn management will not be easy to handle: they are terribly shorthanded at just the wrong time, when they have guests to attend to. Now, of course, Ohana being Ohana, she steps right into the Fukuyo management meeting and volunteers her services. You have to hand it to the girl, she is full of good intentions and has a very strong work ethic, despite her inability to read other peoples’ wishes most of the time. They turn her down politely, as this is their problem, not hers.

On to the free day (no scheduled activities) of the school trip, but Ohana just feels wrong. So, even though Ohana is supposed to have fun on her free day, she feels driven to go back to Fukuyo and help out. This second time that she comes to the manager of Fukuyo, she states that she had this compulsion to come and help out. As they have had no luck in finding short-notice substitute waitresses, this time the head of Fukuyo accepts Ohana’s help. One could wonder why he would just hire a high school student out of the blue, even one who claims to work at another hot springs inn, but in this case special circumstances remove any doubts: the manager of Fukuyo reveals that he once trained at Kissuiso under the tutelage of Sui, and thus Ohana’s working there is good enough for him. Most of all, he is impressed by Ohana’s instinctual need to help out in a crisis.

So, Ohana gets to work, with Yosuke showing her around the behind the scenes areas, working with the automated elevator systems that bring the food up from the kitchen to the rooms. Of course, Ohana’s working there spurs Nako and Minko to want to help out as well (boy, you have to wonder what kind of fear of the whip Sui puts into her employees, well, beyond the slapping, of course). While the extra help is needed, naturally, if something goes wrong, everything goes wrong: the robotic system for bringing food trays breaks down. In this pinch, Ohana comes up with a delaying tactic to allow them more time to set up the dinner trays: have all the guests go take a bath first before dinner.

Ohana certainly gets her moments to shine, but the centerpiece to this episode is the conversation between Yosuke and Yuina, who wanders into the baths, which Yosuke is feverishly trying to get ready in time. Here, we get a summation of everything that we’ve learned about Yuina all this time, and explore it even further. Yuina is a very carefree and relaxed girl. She is good-natured and friendly. But she is also immensely spoiled and privileged. She also harbors some jealousy towards Ohana, because Ohana is praised for her one virtue that Yuina completely lacks: work ethic. When Yosuke releases Yuina from their marriage promise, stating that he’d rather marry someone like Ohana, who would join him in the hard work of running the inn, this sets off a mini-tantrum from Yuina. There’s nothing special about Ohana. It’s not that she can’t work, so Yuina tells us, it’s that she chooses not to work. At which point she picks up a mop and starts furiously scrubbing away at the bath floor. So, it would appear that there is one thing, mainly pride, which can push Yuina to make an effort.

So, in an interesting reversal of how things often played in the first half of the show, Ohana’s good intentions, drive, and determination help to save the day and do not cause complications or pain for others. Of course, Ohana has grown quite a bit over time and is much more competent at what she does. But the focus here really isn’t on Ohana at all. It’s on Yuina, who is the one to learn a lesson about herself and about life. It will be interesting to see whether her newfound appreciation for hard work will have a lasting effect, or will she simply slip back into her old carefree and pampered ways? The ending would seem to point to some learning on her part, as she admits to herself that she was too close to things at Fukuya, her home, and that part of what created her work-avoidance attitude was fear, fear brought on by seeing how hard the work was at Fukuya.

From the beginning, I have expected Hanasaku Iroha to be a story about a young girl’s coming of age and making the transition from the sheltered world of childhood into the harsher world of adults, though I thought we would have these lessons focused on Ohana. In this case, however, the person who had to learn this lesson, the need to work and the fact that it’s not all about being creative and having fun with your career, was never going to be Ohana, as this was something she already knew. So, it was no surprise that Yuina took the spotlight in order for the writers to drive home this lesson. A very good thing about the way they did it is that it did not feel forced or awkwardly adapted, as if this were one of those life lessons they wanted to showcase and only later discovered that it didn’t fit the character of the protagonist, and therefore had to search around for a character to put through this path of development, choosing one at random. While this little bit of character development for Yuina was fairly sudden, it was also quite natural in the way it played out. The little touch of having Yuina be jealous when Yosuke praised Ohana hit home as well with everything we’ve learned about Yuina so far. So many other characters have praised Yuina so many times (from the boys at school, to Ohana’s friends to even Tohru the assistant chef at Kissuiso), it is hard to imagine that Yuina does not hear positive things said about her constantly and has let it get to her head. Suddenly hearing someone who herself (Ohana once made a comparison between them both that was much to Yuina’s advantage) has admitted her inferiority being praised as better struck a chord deep within Yuina, stirring her enough to want to work when previously nothing else would seem to be able to push her to lift a finger.

In the end, this is the reason why Hanasaku Iroha continues to provide quality entertainment, the level of believability and verisimilitude in the characterization of the people. Being characters in fictional drama, they often do act in somewhat more exaggerated and extreme ways than real people would react (which is fully befitting the show’s tendency to veer off into farce at times), but the inner logic of the characters is maintained, and we don’t get serious inconsistencies, as often happens in shows where the writing is done in a more slapdash and haphazard manner.

In Summary:
The importance of hard work forms the basis of the lesson to be learned in this episode, though it is not Ohana who needs to learn that lesson. Instead, it is the spoiled princess Yuina who begins to see what it is that drives Ohana and others to work. While mainly a slice-of-life show, the greatest strength of Hanasaku Iroha comes from the depth of characterization and believability of the people whose lives we are watching. Sure, to a certain extent the resolutions can seem a little too pat, too easily achieved, but then this is drama, not real life. What matters is that the characters maintain one’s belief in their motivations and actions. This level of depth makes for a more satisfying experience. For if you cannot buy into the reasons why a character is acting the way they do, it is unlikely you are going to care at all about whatever it is they are doing.

Grade: A-

Simulcast by: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard