夏のあらし！春夏冬中 Episode 06 Review
Summer Storm! Open for Business Ep. 06
Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-chuu – 06

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Master decides there’s one thing of summer missing and that is the dish known as hiyashichuuka (冷やし中華) — chilled noodles. Arashi says she had some once and loved them, so Master decides that their version of the dish will be named Arashi-chuuka. Since Arashi wants that legendary taste she remembers, Master closes the restaurant and has “Team Hakobune” work on making this dish. After many failures by the others, Jun produces a dish and goes to get Arashi to have her try it. Meanwhile, Master is hungry and has Murata go and buy her some convenience store hiyashichuuka. Arashi samples Jun’s dish and declares it to be the winning taste she remembered.

Yayoi and Kanako think of the basics of cooking according to the “sa-shi-su-se-so” Japanese method and seeing a dish on the counter, they add some ingredients. Master does the same. Kaja sees the modified dish and also contemplates the “sa-shi-su-se-so,” thus adds her own ingredients. Arashi returns with Hajime to have him try the dish, but it tastes rather nasty, leading Arashi to try to find out the cause. She and Hajime go back in time to sample the dish on the counter just after its modification but of course, it still isn’t right.

Back in the present, Jun tells Arashi and Hajime the time that she finished the dish, so they jump to that time and grab the plate. Meanwhile, Murata arrives with the convenience store hiyashichuuka. Despite grumbling, he decides to remove the chilled noodle dish from the container and arrange it nicely on a plate. It is here that Arashi comes in with Jun and Arashi declares this to be the legendary taste.

Returning to the present, Arashi has everyone sample the legendary hiyashichuuka, but no one likes the taste, including Jun. Arashi can’t believe this until she tries it herself. Master figures it is time to add something else to the menu other than hiyashichuuka, but then she remembers she had Murata go out to purchase some instant hiyashichuuka and wonders where her food is.

Thoughts/Review:

Because the old “there was something I read/saw/ate/” joke can never be done enough for SHAFT’s taste, why not make it even longer? Further, since one can never have enough of this joke, lets add another one within the story, only we’ll modify its presentation to give it a fresher feel to it so that it hopefully disguises the smell of decay. *_* But wait! Lets do the joke for a third time to end the episode, since we still have so much time to kill.

The salt joke wasn’t any better with Salt Dude and Old Dude stuck outside the restaurant the whole time. Of course Salt Dude has to keep trying to get salt. *_*

The episode itself really didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t find it funny nor interesting. I pretty much figured that when Murata had been dispatched for food, his instant hiyashichuuka would be the winner. Everything else was just going through the motions of getting that confirmation. The episode was an excuse at showing off certain noodle dishes (other than ramen) including yakisoba and nagashi soumen.

So in typical SHAFT fashion, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I chalk this one up in the loss column for the most part, though it wasn’t a terrible episode (to be fair).