みなみけ おかえり Episode 12
Minami-ke Okaeri 12

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: 

 It is a warm spring day and Chiaki is sleeping with her feet out of the open sliding glass door when the noise from Kana, Uchida, and Maki wakes her up. She’s annoyed and wants them to shut up and let her sleep. Kana forces Uchida into the “ring” with Chiaki for a verbal sparing match, but Chiaki wins. Maki is next but Chiaki wins. Kana then takes the “ring” and engages Chiaki. Meanwhile, Haruka arrives with a plate of sakuramochi, so Maki and Uchida grab some. Since Chiaki had said nothing would move her from her spot, Kana refuses to let Chiaki go get some of the snack food, resulting in them wrestling instead of verbally sparing.

Maki comes over to the Minami residence where Kana, “Mako-chan,” and Uchida are snoozing. She remembers an incident from junior high school where she woke up and the other girls were laughing at her so she wants to see if there’s something funny about her face when she sleeps. After some double entendre confusion, Maki and Uchida sleep while Kana and Mako-chan watch. After a time, Kana takes a permanent marker and writes “hime” (princess) on Uchida’s forehead (because Kana had told Uchida that she was no princess) and draws whiskers and stuff on Maki’s face. When Haruka and Chiaki come home, they find Mako-chan and Kana rolling on the floor laughing while Maki is depressed, not knowing that Kana wrote on her face. Sometime later, Atsuko comes over and has pictures of Maki from their junior high days where Kana sees that back then, someone drew the exact same design on Maki’s face as Kana had.

Kana comes home and picks up Haruka’s seifuku, which has just been tossed on the ground. Kana decides that with the school changing to warm weather seifuku in a few days that maybe it is time to reinvent herself. Since Chiaki is doing a bit of repair work on her own seifuku, Kana asks Chiaki to turn one of her long sleave shirts into short sleave. Chiaki does this but accidently cuts the front of Haruka’s seifuku skirt. After some fighting with Kana, Chiaki makes a quick repair and hopes for the best until the end of the week. Everything goes fine until the last day of the week when Haruka is talking with Natsuki and Maki notices a loose thread in the front of Haruka’s skirt. She pulls the thread, causing Haruka’s skirt to open and fall and Natsuki to have a bloody nose.

After Chiaki throws her latest “bakayarou” insult at Kana, Kana has had enough. This leads to a fight where Chiaki decks Kana in the face. Kana decides that before Chiaki becomes a delinquent, Kana must do something about it like show Chiaki more love. So Kana begins to try to be considerate of Chiaki. She tries to engage Chiaki in conversation about Chiaki’s school life. At dinner, she offers some of her own uneaten food to Chiaki, causing Chiaki to think that Kana wants to make her fat. However, because they are both being polite in their offers and refusals, Haruka is pleased to see they are getting along. At bath time, Kana wants to wash Chiaki’s back, but is refused. Haruka is pleased that Kana is offering to do such a thing but Chiaki thinks that Kana is going to finish her off. When she comes to their room, Kana is in Chiaki’s bed with Chiaki’s book and is planning to read to her. However, the Kanji is too dificult for Kana and Chiaki goes to Haruka’s bedroom, telling Haruka her fears that she’s about to be eaten.

Thoughts/Review:

Hmmmm — not very funny this week either. This episode did remind me that Kana has been a stronger, crafier character this series than in previous ones. Chiaki did get one of her trademark “Fujioka Bear Attacks” in and she decked Kana as well in addition to her “bakayarou” insult, but Kana gives back as well. The first story where Kana wouldn’t let Chiaki go get the desert is one such instance of that and there have been plenty of others as well.

Beyond that, there’s really not much to say. Things happened and I was entertained, but I never laughed. That’s been the weakness of this series — sometimes there are good laughs and sometimes there are not. This was clearly a “not” situation. However, as I’ve said before, this 3rd series is still much better than the aweful 2nd series. *shudder*

One thing I will note is that there seemed to be some slightly different charater designs in the third story. They weren’t bad, just somewhat different.

Only one more episode to go.