Minami-ke Okaeri — Final Thoughts

Minami-ke is such a great series that when Minami-ke Okawari came out, I was very excited. However, Minami-ke Okawari ended up being a great disappointment both in terms of humor, in changes to story presentation, and the inclusion of the “Black-san” characters. With the announcement of Minami-ke Okaeri, I had hopes of improvements but quietly kept low expectations. So how did this third series do? Better than Okawari but not reaching Minami-ke.

The series started off well enough, though not with the bang that Minami-ke grabbed me with. The return to the short-story presentation works so much better for this series rather than the single episode approach. Also, the removal of the “Black-san” characters improved the enjoyment. That method of having generic characters really annoyed me.

With the second episode, I really had high hopes for the series because that episode was really good, on par with the good stuff I’d enjoyed in Minami-ke. Unfortunately, this was the best episode of Minami-ke Okaeri (Curry Fairy!) and the third episode didn’t do a lot for me. The fourth episode was good again. The fifth one, no so great, and so forth. That ends up being one of the problems with the series — it is a lot hit-or-miss when it comes to the humor. Hosaka ends up providing some of the funniest material with Natsuki coming in second. Some episodes had stories that ended oddly, which was somewhat of a negative for me because it wasn’t funny.

This third series makes an effort to bring in many forgotten characters from Minami-ke and that’s a welcome thing. Unfortunately, some of them still didn’t add to much such as two of Touma’s brothers. As I mentioned before, Natsuki was a win, but the other two brothers were rather tiresome and tedious. In addition, the character designs are changed so much that some characters are just about unrecognizable. The anime adds a new character — Hitomi. I liked her character and her interest in Natsuki, but she only appeared in one episode. I don’t know what was up with that but it was disappointing.

In the end, Minami-ke Okaeri ends up being better than Minami-ke Okawari, but not living up to the standards set by Minami-ke. While the series does have moments that are as good as the original when it comes to humor, most of the time it does not. Since this series doesn’t have the replay value in my mind that Minami-ke has, I can only give it a 3 out of 5.