Hanasaku Iroha – Episode 19 – Aloof Minko and her war against Omurice

With the school festival coming in a matter of days, Ohana is very excited about her class’s plan to do a Princess Cafè. For Minko, she takes it a bit too seriously…

Before diving into the drama, there were some really pleasing moments as Yuina and Minko got picked to manage the two committees for serving and food respectively. It enviably leads us to some fanservice, most namely with the outfits and Ohana’s humming of the opening song. While Yuina is overly cheerful and carefree, she looked really cute in the waitress uniform that the Kissuisou Inn wore in the past.  To take it even further, in Ohana’s brief dream, she imagined Ko crossdressing while she served to other people.  He was essentially wearing the waitress uniform similar to what Ohana has on complete with hair decorations. Her fantasy simply gave me the giggles since it was cute and came out of nowhere. Besides their efforts, it was also nice to see Nako taking part in the committee after she decided to act her real self from the last episode.

For a while now, Minko has caught my attention with her abilities and personality. Many students look up to her since she has a pretty appearance while being a hard worker.  However, she is harsh to everyone, even though she mellowed out with her friends. As shown with the lovestrucked girl complaining about the lack of Omurice, she doesn’t take any regard for her feelings. While I thought that Yuki’s request to have it on the menu just so she can serve it to her love interest is selfish, she doesn’t realize that the majority of the group members don’t want the dish on the menu since it doesn’t fit with the overall theme. However, I felt that Minko could have handled this a bit better and negotiated than having a big debate over it like the Congress did with the debt ceiling. She should have allowed Yuki make the dish just for her crush as a special request so that it won’t ruin the menu. Sadly, three of the girls were so caught up about it that such an action couldn’t happen.

On the other hand, Minko’s position that romance shouldn’t influence the work one does has caught my attention.  She is right that in a sense that if we let our romantic feelings control how we work, things will simply get in the way and the end result will be undesirable. Conversely, by saying this statement, she is being hypocritical. While the committee doesn’t notice it, she planned the menu just to impress Tooru with her cooking skills. Although you can argue that she did this in order to show her professional culinary skills and fit the theme of the cafè, she is also guilty since she let her love for Tooru influence how she worked. If this was the case, she should have admitted it and compromise so that Yuki and herself will be happy.  Given her aloof personality and unwillingness to change her decision, I highly doubt this will happen even if she conceded.

In the end, while the spat over Omurice was completely stupid, it was nice to see some drama and development with Minko. From this, I still think that Minko should loosen up and stop being too harsh to everyone who is willing to cooperate with her. With the breakdown of the committee, things will only get more hectic and I predict that she is going to blink and make it anyways. With this, we just have to wait and see how everything unfolds in the next episode. ¶