Sakura Quest Episode 5 Review – “The Budding Yggdrasil”

Sorry that is coming out so late. I stayed up all night for the “Mori Girls and Anime” post so that messed up my schedule for Wednesday night (which is when this show comes out) and then I had a wild drinking night on Thursday evening to cope with traditionalism.

(Spoilers in this review) 

As expected, Sanae sulks like a child as she runs away from her duties for a fair amount of the episode. The others are surprisingly patient with her behavior, to be honest. Maki even admits that she feels this way sometimes. Does this mean we’ll get an arc where the Oden Detective loses her motivation and nerve later on, too?

However, Sanae does end up rejoining the Board of Tourism in the end. Her somewhat frequent talks with Tatsuo, who comes up with the idea of making wood carved designer shoes, might have helped her decide to reclaim her position of Manager of IT, but what probably gave her the final push was her impromptu talk with Yoshino. Admitting that a lot of people are replacable, the Queen stresses that the efforts and results differ on an individual basis.

While this is true, I do hope that they don’t make Yoshino deliver too many convenient speeches as if she’s a fountain of wisdom. She is supposed to be the “youthful foolish outsider,” after all. How can she look foolish when she’s dropping knowledge bombs and cheering up older women?

Sanae also claims that Kazushi’s lukewarm praise was the first time someone’s complimented her. Are you really sure, Sanae? I’m pretty sure everyone was impressed with your website’s design in episode 2. Or do compliments from girls not count?

Yoshino’s plan of  building a large wooden place (and calling it the “Sakura Pond Familia”) shows that she’s genuinely invested in the future of Manoyama since the project will take many years and is intended to last for many years so their children and grandchildren to admire. So do you intend to settle down here, Yoshino? However, when she was confronted about her attachment to Manoyama, Yoshino does not deny or affirm the claim. I guess she had decided to really try her best for Manoyama back in episode 3 when she entered the mascot contest, but it hasn’t really been spelled out yet, I think. No inner monologue to accentuate mindsets and thought patterns have popped up thus far, but that may change in the future.

Sanae does demonstrate that she can generate results that are worthy of note (and praise) by expanding upon Yoshino’s proposal. She proposes primarily focusing the bulk of the investment at the train station, which is the first sight everyone sees upon entering Manoyama, and starting small with inserting ranma panels into said train station. As a side note, this makes the train station the namesake of the episode; the Yggdrasil is an ancient, mystical tree that connects the nine worlds while the train station connects the “outside” world to Manoyama. It’s, like, scaled down by quite a lot but the concept is there, okay?

Overall I thought that this episode was a decent continutation of Sanae’s plight. The girls are starting to see a bit of success since some visitors arriving at the train station admire the ranma panels and all. But they’re investing in a long-term plan so results will probably be unimpressive for the time being. Will each character get their own individual arcs? PA Works will have to properly handle the hypothetical arcs to prevent them from becoming too melodramatic and/or drawn-out if they want to keep my vote.