One more dragon coming up! Kobayashi and Tohru also have a heart-to-heart talk this week.
(Spoilers in this review)
The first part of the episode has Tohru and Kobayashi fighting to decide who gets to pack Kanna’s bento (since the adorable and petite dragon is going on a field trip). As a result, the two compete against each other as if they were contestants in Shokugeki no Soma.
The match is close, but ultimately Kobayashi wins the set 2-1. Faf-kun and Lucoa take note that this small fight is only possible because Kobayashi and Tohru are close to each other. In response to their questioning, Kobayashi declares that they can still be friends even though one of them technically serves the other. For our dead-fish-eyes-protagonist, that was a pretty straightforward and nice thing to say.
The rest of the episode introduces us to a new character, Elma. Because Tohru traveled to the other world to grab a kissing-plant-thing, Elma was able to enter into our world through this new portal.
Elma is making a pretty late appearance (which seems to be the standard procedure in most slice-of-life shows, to be honest) at episode 8. But you know what? I really, really like Elma a lot. The way she’s earnest and diligent really won me over.
It turns out that Elma and Tohru do not get along with each other because they belong to different factions. Elma is with the harmony faction, which desires law and order, whereas Tohru is with the chaos faction, which yearns for havoc and destruction. D-doesn’t that mean Tohru is a villain? Seems like Faf-kun is also in the chaos faction by extension due to his gung-ho attitude in regards to killing humans.
Tohru ends up tricking Elma and sends her to a different continent (the same grassy plains Tohru, Kobayashi, and Kanna visited back in episode 2). Nevertheless, Elma barges back in the following day, determined to bring Tohru back into the other world even though Tohru is insistent on staying here.
However, Elma is still hungry, so Tohru uses that to her advantage and convinces her to leave by offering her a bag of cream-filled bread.
The next part of the episode has Elma transfer into Kobayashi’s work place as a new employee. She probably did so with the help of magic! I’m not sure this was a smart move on her part since she initially doesn’t know anything about computers, but Kobayashi helps her learn.
It turns out that Elma is stuck in this world because she lacks the ability to open up portals to cross worlds. Different dragons have different skillsets, it seems. That explains why she’s working, but I’m still wondering why she chose this particular job. Perhaps it was just a coincidence.
Kobayashi and Elma thus start getting along pretty well, which leads Tohru to become insanely jealous. As a result, Tohru sort of reverts to how she was back in episode 1 in an desperate attempt to get Kobayashi to give her attention. That would entail destroying furniture with her powers and trying to feed Kobayashi her tail. All of this happens during Kobayashi’s day off, too. She just wants to take it easy!
Kobayashi confronts Tohru about her behavior. The dragon maid is disappointed that Kobayashi doesn’t immediately understand the reasoning behind her actions, but at least Kobayashi is making an effort, right?
Unfortunately for Tohru, Elma swings by and hands Kobayashi a good luck charm as thanks for helping her during work. And somehow Elma seems to have forgotten how to wear clothes… At any rate, Tohru gets jealous again (which Kobayashi notices) and fires an energy beam at poor Elma, which sends the dragon office lady blasting off like she was an honorary member of Team Rocket.
Afterwards, Tohru admits that she’s selfish and that she’s trying to hold herself back from being too needy. However, Tohru also claims that Kobayashi is being mean and isn’t giving her enough attention even though she works so hard. In response, Kobayashi readily confesses that she’s not really used to being chased. She’s had friends before, but none of them were really close friends (and at this point, I imagine that Tohru is at least a little happy since that means Kobayashi doesn’t consider Takiya, her male co-worker, to be a close friend). In short, Kobayashi is not sure how to handle this situation.
Nevertheless, she tenderly pats Tohru’s head, saying that she can’t be any clearer than this and that Tohru should take the hint. Upon hearing those words, Tohru tears up and says she’ll try to read in-between the lines more.
I really enjoyed this scene because these two characters communicated. Sure, Tohru was a bit unreasonable by expecting Kobayashi to automatically understand the motivations regarding her abnormal behavior and Kobayashi has been sending Tohru mixed signals for 8 episodes. But they’re trying. They’re both confused and unsure, but they’re trying to talk among themselves in order to understand each and to make things work. You can’t help but feel great about this!
I have to say that this episode was rather enjoyable. The show finally addresses some concerns regarding Kobayashi’s treatment of Tohru while introducing a new character relatively successively (and without completely neglecting the other characters). We really could have done without the short scenes showing Shouta and Lucoa, but at least it was kept to a minimum for this episode.
The Lily Garden 