WARNING: The following article contains SPOILERS for Denki-Gai Episode 9. If you don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading. You have been warned.
So, in the world of Denki-Gai, it is Christmas…again. Okay, as much as I love Christmas, there can be too much of a good thing. This really makes it noticeable that the series is reusing plot threads. Hell, according to the preview for the next episode, we are about to have another Valentine’s Day special. I suppose it shouldn’t matter as long as it is still funny, but it makes me concerned how long this show can go on for. I think it is safe to assume that it is good to go until the end of the season, but I want to see it go on after that. However, that is unrelated to the actual quality of the episode, as it was still great and hilarious.
So our episode starts when Hiotan gets a cold. Seeing as how this is an anime cold, Hiotan is left bedridden and is unable to come into work. Seriously, why is it that the common cold is always so potent in anime? Hell, I remember in one series someone was going to stay home on the day of his final exam because of a cold. All that colds do are make you cough and sneeze; they don’t disable your immune system. So because of this, Kantoku tries to look after Hiotan, but Hiotan suddenly goes tsundere and tries to get him to leave. Honestly, I don’t even know why Hiotan was so aggressive. She kept mentioning that Kantoku should leave right away and was very insistent on him doing so. I was expecting it to build up to something like her trying to hide a stash of Yaoi manga from him, but they kind of did nothing with it (It would have been especially great seeing as how I just so happened to have made that exact joke myself in one of my Wolf Girl and Black Prince commentaries).
So it ends when Hiotan recovers and Kantoku catches the cold, only no one comes to see him because Hiotan does not want anyone to catch the cold. I’ll be honest, that was kind of a dick move on your part, Hiotan. It does not even work because she ends up getting another cold soon afterwards anyway. This results in Sensei coming to look after Hiotan in order to find out the secret to her girl power. She ends up looking through Sensei’s dirty laundry and finds a bunch of skimpy outfits, which causes her to lose it in one of her frenzies. Afterwards it is revealed that they belonged to Hiotan’s sister.
The second half of the episode takes place at the store on Christmas, and it is an excuse for Denki-Gai’s typical wacky perverted hijinks. In particular, the ero book inspector lady gives a bunch of ero books away to people, and there is a passionate speech about how these ero books were about to be trashed for not following the proper procedures. This ends with people lining up to get ero books, and everyone wishing you a happy Erostmas, and a happy Erostmas it was.
This episode seems to sum up how Denki-Gai currently is; it does nothing new, but it is still great at what it was always doing. It is great at setting up comedic situations and being outright ridiculous. I really cracked up when I saw someone buying a book titled “1000 Ways to **** Santa Claus.” Hell it seems that Denki-Gai is milking this gag for all it’s worth, and I am perfectly fine with it doing so. The great thing about this series is that it knows to stick to its strength. I will admit that I do not find the characters or their own development all that interesting. That is not to say I find them bad by any means, it is just that I don’t feel they are the most strongly developed. Denki-Gai seems aware of this, and it knows to play to its strength in terms of humor.
Only 3 episodes left of Denki-Gai are this season, so let’s hope it keeps up this quality.
Denki-Gai is available to watch on Crunchyroll, with new episodes coming out Thursdays at 10:30 AM ET/7:30 AM PT. Non-premium users will be able to watch episodes free one week after they first air.
