Nanami’s now in Sakura House and her personality is definitely becoming obvious.

What They Say:
Nanami has overworked herself with taking care of Shiina, her jobs, and voice acting school. Her midterm presentation is coming up and she is in no shape to take it. Can Sorata do anything to help her?

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In moving Nanami into the house in the previous episode, things obviously stepped up a bit with the kind of encounters that can happen in Sakura House. With Sorata already making the decision to stay there and to get a bit closer to Shiina in some ways, Nanami brings a different kind of feel to the series. With her being “normal” compared to Shiina, there’s some fun to be had there with how Shiina takes to her in varying degrees and spends time with her. But we also continue to see that there are things that Shiina really does have problems with, cementing the way she’s just different in handling basic day to day kinds of activities like laundry. It’s a small piece of the larger puzzle overall.

With Nanami, she’s definitely made it clear that she’s the type of personality that will continually take on more and more responsibilities. Made obvious early on here, we see all the chores she does, the work with Shiina, her own studies and the voice acting aspect as well. It does say a lot about her personal ethics but also that she’ll work herself right into the grave in order to do what she believes is required of her without ever asking for help. Which is different from Sorata, who sees what she’s doing and raises some concerns, noting to Jin that his believe is that everyone in the house should work to help each other at times along the way. It’s definitely the right sentiment and one that fits him pretty well.

While we get some good time with Sorata dealing with Shiina at times, the really good moments that shine, even in the midst of the rain, is when he spends time with Nanami and does everything he can to help her. She’s so worn down and prone to emotion at this point that it does all come gushing out in a rather honest way. While Nanami was an amusing character in general when introduced, she really becomes a much more enjoyable character here and has me wanting to see a lot more of her. While Shiina is an obvious lead here and the one that you know Sorata will end up with in some fashion, Nanami is the kind of character that you find yourself wanting to see make out even better in the end because she’s so real and honest.

In Summary:
The Pet Girl of Sakurasou continues to work pretty well overall and the way it works the characters allows it to succeed far better than I expected. A lot of what helps is the beautiful character designs and overall animation, but with episodes like this we get to see it infused with some good acting and emotion that’s needed to portray these college age kids. The heavy focus on Nanami in so many ways, especially the embarrassed and playful aspect, worked very well for me and made this episode a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure about this series in the slightest when it started, but it won me over with its production values and slowly but sure is drawing me in with the cast and their stories as they slowly come to light. This is a solid and welcome episode in the series.

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.