Sweetness and Lightning 10
Amaama to Inazuma episode 10

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kouhei takes a depressed Tsumugi to the beach. Afterward, he gets some aji fish and sends a text to Kotori about bringing them over. Kouhei and Tsumugi show up where Shinobu and an excited Kotori wait. They notice Tsumugi’s depression, which Kouhei explains as Tsumugi acting spoiled. Tsumugi quietly says she’s a cat, so it is OK. Hearing this, Shinobu starts acting like a cat, which causes Tsumugi to respond. With a little convincing from Kotori and a web video found by Shinobu on how to fillet fish, Kouhei is convinced to try his hand at making a fish meal. Kotori wants sushi, but since Tsumugi only likes tamago sushi, they decide to make sangayaki and namerou.

As Kouhei begins the work of scaling, gutting, beheading, and filleting the fish, Tsumugi becomes more interested in the process. Once he’s cut the first fish into three fillets, Kotori decides they need to sample a bit of it as sashimi. Tsumugi sees their reactions and decides to try a piece, deciding it is pretty good. Tsumugi’s depression is gone as she dances while Kouhei fillets the remaining fish. Then, he and Kotori make sangayaki and namerou. While the sangayaki fries, Yagi comes by and the five of them eat. Tsumugi tells Kouhei she had a great day. As they eat, Yagi tells a story of learning to cook.

Thoughts/Review:

As usual, another episode into delightful wholesomeness. However, it isn’t quite as good ’cause a non-cheerful Tsumugi is not fun to watch. Watching fish being filleted isn’t fun. For the record, this episode is adopted from chapter 13 of the manga.

Depressed Tsumugi

Tsumugi’s spoiled, depressed behavior made me wonder what was going on. Yeah, I remembered the previous episode dealt with eating homemade curry. There, Tsumugi cried because she remembered and missed her mom. However, this anime series has not been that serial in nature. The episodes have been episodic.

As such, I did consult the manga. There, it is clearly laid out that Tsumugi is still feeling the depressed after being reminded of her deceased mom. I don’t know why the anime episode couldn’t have taken a moment to provide that info. After all, a ton of time was spent on filleting fish.

Still, I’m glad that Shinobu started lifting Tsumugi’s spirit by playing along with Tsumugi’s declaration of being a cat. Then the whole incident of witnessing a fish become fillets finished the trip to happy Tsumugi. I like happy Tsumugi. 🙂

Kotori Loves Sensei

As I said, Sweetness and Lightning has not had a plot to speak of. There’s the element of Kouhei and Tsumugi living without Tsumugi’s mom and remembering life with her. That happened again this episode.

The other element has been this hint of romance between Kotori and Kouhei. This element is apparently played down in the anime (not sure why), but then TMS allows a flash of it to come through. The cutest moment in the episode came when Tsumugi got a text from Kouhei and immediately perked up. Then she looks at Shinobu to see if Shinobu has noticed. 😆

Whenever I see Kotori and Kouhei together, I can’t help but think about how great the are as a couple. I’d like to see a bit more of this, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

The Food

Is it just me, or did those three aji seem kind of small? That’s a large cooler for three small fish. 😉

I’m glad that the Japanese dish names sangayaki and namerou were spelled out here. When I go to Japanese restaurants, I often look for dishes I’ve heard about in anime or read about in manga. It helps to know the Japanese names of the dishes.

While the subtitles may have spelled out sangayaki and namerou, for some weird reason, tamago sushi was called egg sushi. Yet this is what Crunchyroll chose. What makes that weirder is that in the Crunchyroll manga, it is called tamago sushi.

I’ve never been to any Japanese restaurant where tamago sushi wasn’t called that. A couple of times, I’ve seen the term “egg custard” in parentheses to explain what the restaurant means by tamago. (Egg custard tamago is sweet whereas regular tamago isn’t so much.)

Filleting Fish

This episode spent a ton of time showing Kouhei cleaning and filleting a fish.  I believe the time burned in the anime for this took five minutes, more if you count all the time spent in prep. The only thing that kept it from being totally boring were the cuts to Tsumugi’s reactions.

This is why I don’t buy fish where I have to scale it, clean it, or fillet it. 😉

In Conclusion

In the end, Sweetness and Lightning 10 is a pretty good episode, but not quite as good due to Tsumugi’s depression and the long fish cleaning scene.