Sending your robot to school because she’s an idiot.
So, here Natsuki makes good on his promise to go to school with Atri. On the way there, they’re accosted by a trio of little kids who regard Natsuki as a scary hitman, which he plays into in a sour way. Once the kids inadvertently lead him to school, Natsuki finds that dear Minamo is not a schoolgirl herself but rather their teacher, doing what she can to keep school alive in this dying town.
They also encounter an older boy who is very hostile towards Natsuki, Mainlanders, and basically everyone other than the local kids since he has a huge chip on his shoulder. It’s clear that he does care about his town and especially about the trio actually getting their classes, but he comes off as very unpleasant.
After Atri once again seems to nearly sink Natsuki’s house in a cooking incident, she realizes she left her notebook behind at school, and insists on getting it the same night. There, they encounter one of the little kids, who is living in the school ruins and trying to do her best to comprehend electricity, in the hopes of putting something together.
This inspires Natsuki to do a little research himself, and the next day make a presentation at school, showing off how wind power works and countering the objections of the grumpy guy that it’s impossible for them to do anything by starting to set up a plan for a tidal generator and battery bank. The episode ends with that plan implied.
So, at the moment, a big part of how you react to Atri the show is going to be bound up in how you react to Atri the character. She walks a thin line between adorable and annoying, which is clearly intentional. But, since she acts as the anchor for pretty much every major scene, if her antics annoy you the show will probably be losing patience by this point. For my part, I think she stays on the good side of the line pretty effectively. She clearly annoys the other characters, or at least Natsuki, but for the most part her antics are endearing more than anything. The disaster chef gag less so, but her general childlike nature and human ability to forget or lie does help her come off as more personable.
That said, there’s clearly more of a story brewing outside of her. We’d heard of Natsuki’s dreams regarding the rocket launch before, but there had been a sense that people were content to just let everything else circle the drain. Here, we’re starting to get invested in a future on Earth, and building something for the people around here rather than just watching it decay in a vaguely beautiful way. This is solid, because Natsuki’s stated problem was more or less his isolation from others (at least as someone like Minamo would see it, along with the audience) and his stated asset is incredible intelligence, and now he’s working on one and using the other to do it. I’m just hoping we don’t go too deep into the ironically-named “Feel good” media loop, since that sort of material rarely feels good and often hits insipid and manipulative.