After the big commotion over Episode 3, everything seems to go back on track with Ohana settling to the new school for the first time. Later, Minko reveals that she has a crush on Tohru, which she is somewhat insecure about.
It seems that Ohana improved her relations with Minko a little bit. Sadly her actions still irritate Minko rather easily. Instead of telling her to die, she calls her Hobiron, which is a fertilized egg of a duck … Still, it’s pretty insulting nevertheless, but it’s a step up from being told to die.
The funniest part of Episode 4 is everyone being excited over Ohana living in the city that everyone practically became fangirls. After getting flooded with questions, a girl named Yuina grabs Ohana to escape the crowd of people. Like Ohana, Yuina is a very pretty and a smart girl who is a granddaughter of a strict grandmother who owns an inn. Since their experiences are so similar, she makes a good friend for Ohana.
Tsunderes are extremely picky when it comes to the person they have romantic feelings for and Minko is no exception. She harshly turns down every love request she receives at school. When she describes the boy she likes, she basically admits that she likes Tohru. Knowing this, Ohana has an idea to use her new nickname she came up with by mentioning something about Minko’s love life and she overreacts to it.
The next morning, she gets really violent to the point were she tries to strangle Ohana near another inn even though she is terribly sorry for making those statements about her crush. In the end, it seemed that Minko got really upset when he saw Yuina climbing onto Tohru’s motorcycle playing a song about partying.
In Episode 5, we learned that Tohru was missing from work and Minko becomes depressed… To add to the fuel of the fire, Jiroumaru adds more false rumors that he will quit his job and get a new job at Fukuya. At this point, she gets very depressed since she will never get to see him ever again and won’t be able to join him over at the Fukuya Inn since she is very inexperienced. Also, her future is very questionable since Tohru convince the Landlady to give her the job. This explains her strong feelings for him since he is her mentor and likes his personality a lot.
In the end, she pretty much pushes everyone away, until Ohana force her way through and helped her. She stormed into the Fukuya inn and finds out that it’s a big misunderstanding and that Tohru is covering for one day. He also allowed Yuina to ride with him on the motorbike since she wanted one too… After I saw this, I facepalmed since Minko got worked up over nothing!
After sawing the whole incident unfolds, Minko is showing that she is a big tsundere. She knew from the beginning that Tohru is not going to leave without telling everyone about it. After seeing her get worked up, Minko lacks self-confidence, which is why she reacts so harshly around her peers like any tsundere. In the end, she has finally warmed up towards Ohana and she allows her to be referred as Minachi, which made me glad. Since they have finally made up, hopefully they will start working together well into the future.
Who’s Minako, I’m guess you meant Minko? And why do you call her tsundere? I’m confused
Rushing to post because of exams, but as a result I made more typos then I normally do… Then again, I should be studying instead of watching anime… Oh well.
Anyways..
To me, Minko has shown herself to be tsundere not only because of her rather irritable behavior, but her love interest. She seems to depend on Tohru a lot since she is very inexperienced and she needs a mentor to help her along the way. She has developed feelings for him during that time, but afraid to let it out. She lashes out on Ohana when she brings it up… and of course, the blushing at every possible moment. To me, her violent behavior towards her peers, especially Ohana is a way to cover up these insecurities, a quality which is prevalent in most tsundere characters.
I really think the tsundere is way over used…there have been more poignant debates on this, which I will refrain from at this time. But I will say this. If you’re looking at classic tsundere references, Minko doesn’t fit, and here’s why: Classic example of tsundere characters have the cold/hot thing going for the particular love interest, because of said insecurities.
Minko is warm to Tohru, but cold to Ohana, and lukewarm to everyone else. This is not the same thing as the tsundere. Minko is not lashing out at Ohana because she’s insecure, she genuinely doesn’t like her. My guess is that’s how Minko deals with everyone she just meets, like judging a book by its cover.
You seem to call every character with a bad attitude tsundere, but I think there’s far less of that genre around than ever before. Lumping Hanasaku Iroha into typical moe genres kind of bugs me I guess, because I see this as a story about learning to grow up in new, uncomfortable surroundings far away from what’s familiar. This is not typical stupid crap like lolis with guns fighting off segways, or whatever that girl in A-channel was doing protecting parakeet hair with baseball bats.
**NOTE: What I believe is stupid crap is just my opinion, that is all.
It’s a fairly common trap that most viewers including myself get into after watching so many shows that have a tsundere character in it… From that, I do feel that Minko is a strong willed girl who is really strict and easily irritable… Her character is a bit more complicated, but still there is a lot we still don’t know about her… same with Nako, but they will be more developed opposed to the typical moe characters…
Nevertheless, I am enjoying the developments in this show thus far and hopefully in the end, it will be a good experience for Ohana.