Look, life happens.
First, a quick summary. Episode 4 sees Inako and Kihachi helping an old woman reconnect with the world by using some electrical tech, smoke, and mirrors to convince her she’s talking to her departed husband. It’s a bit of a focal episode for Inako, since it digs in to her loss of her mother. In Episode 5 we waste time with a love tester and a guy with a crush on one of Inako’s friends. This is pretty filler-heavy. Episode 6 sees Inako and her friends, backed by Kihachi, engage in a musical battle against Yousuke, his steam organ (played by an automaton which no doubt serves as a bit of a plot point) against the girls and some electric-amped instruments. Inako accidentally invents heavy metal and headbanging in what is honestly a pretty good number.
Episode 7 puts the two on the run, going to see the father of one of Inako’s friends (the blonde one) who supposedly has the other half of the catalog. This is taken as the two eloping, so it’s pretty much a chase scene, during which Kengo switches sides for good. Episode 8, finally, has us learn both the brother’s backstory with the professor/dad and Kengo’s backstory with the brother in war, including how Kihachi’s brother died. Kihachi retrieves the second half of the catalog, but Yousuke has gone to blackmail stage two saying he’ll let Inako out of marriage if the catalog is delivered to him, and Kihachi is inclined to buy her future and stand on his own rather than keeping the catalog to realize his dreams.
Honestly, he has the ability to copy down notes before handing the book over, and how has a wealth of experience as well as the reference volumes his brother used to annotate the catalog. Given how much she helps, I think Inako may just flat out be worth more than the book at this stage, human feelings aside.
Throughout this, we get a few major plot threads. Following up on Inako, learning that she wants to be a master sake brewer like her mom, is one. It helps giving her a dream and a motivation, and a solid reason why she really doesn’t want to just be Yousuke’s kept woman. Sure, her dream has nothing to do with electricity, but it helps her be an independent and interesting character.
The other major thread, not that it gets a lot of screen time, has to do with Yousuke, as we’re let in to him having some sort of automaton of the brother in his basement. It’s unclear if this is just a steam powered replica or if it’s supposed to be some kind of steampunk cyborg incorporating parts of the original, but it’s creepy as hell all the same. If this were just going to be a sideshow, though, I doubt it would merit being included in the opening, so I fully expect Mecha-Seiroku to be an issue later on.
Honestly, this show has thusfar been far stronger than I initially expected. I was expecting a sort of Shine On! level of it being sort of fun, but not exactly quality. This was especially after episode 3, which was good but veered enough into accurate history of the electric light that I had the feeling I now know to be incorrect that we would be going edutainment places. Instead, we’ve gotten a fair amount of pathos on the themes of our leads, a fantastically batty antagonist, and actually some good work on side characters like Kengo. It’s not jawdropping, don’t get it twisted, but it is very solid so far. We’ll see in the coming weeks how it sticks the landing.