English Dub Review: Sakura Quest “The Fairy’s Recipe”

-or “Fluttershy Puts Her Hoof Down”.

Spoilers Below

The Manoyama Tourism Board has a new scheme to drum up interest in the sleepy hamlet. The C-Rank Gourmet exhibition is intended to showcase the best foods of Manoyama, hoping to draw in the foodies. One of the big things is the locally-sourced, fresh-from-farm ingredients. Just so happens, Shiori’s family runs a local farm. She’s also an amazing cook. So why isn’t she taking the lead on this food exhibition? Anyways, on a trip to the farm, we get to meet her older sister Sayuki, who’s a pediatrician. She’s going to be moving away to be closer to the hospital, and it’s breaking her father’s, heart. Not in a crazy, you-can’t-leave-me-I’m-chaining-you-to-your-bed kind of way. More like my-baby-is-growing-up kinda way. The family has a nice meal out to a local restaurant to celebrate. The place was recently placed under new management and is owned by a classmate of Sayuki’s. There is some hidden past between those two, and they are very subtle about it.

In an attempt to aid in their chefery, the ladies of the tourism board go out to catch fish with their bare hands. Wait, who said that was the way to do it? Well, they aren’t the only ones that do it that way. The chef from the restaurant shows up and catches fish by the droves that way. Between that and his massive bone structure, they nickname him Mr. Bear. He offers to tell them what local ingredients are in season, which is how he decides on his menu. Of course, even with this most of the girls only come up with terrible dishes that have little to do with Manoyama. Only Shiori’s dishes are properly local, but they’re kinda plain-looking. Problem is, the Board of Merchants has a beef with this whole barbecue (see what I did there?). It’s going on on the same day as their annual festival, competing for customers. This has the Merchants up in arms because it shows that the Tourism Board doesn’t even care to consult with them on things. To make matters worse, Kadota’s Chupakabura Manju Deluxe has gone a bit off the reservation. He’s stopped using locally sourced ingredients and manju, going instead for cheaper products from an outside company. The local sourcing for the manju was the only reason the Merchant Board signed off on it in the first place! Yoshino and the rest of the team are ready and willing to throw themselves on the sword for their mistakes. She’s even willing to kill the project, but Shiori steps up and pushes for it. She decides to personally take responsibility for the project, and make it something that will not only be approved by the merchants but good for the entire town. Ganbare, Yoshino-san!

All in all, I found this episode delightful. It was written with great dialogue and shows how each of the girls is growing through this story. Maki and Sanae are like two peas in a pod, joking around almost constantly with each other. On the other hand, Ririko is developing even more than the others. Not only is she far more social in this episode, she pulls off several perfectly zingy one-liners, as performed by Miss Brina Palencia. We get to see her getting involved with each episode theme, and learning about herself in the meantime. Here, we catch her cooking out of a novelty cookbook for witches. She’s coming out of her shell, bit by bit, and becoming far more than a NEET shut-in. Of course, the real star here is Shiori. Tiny chunks of B-plot surrounding her talk about her parents’ farm, her future, and the possibility she might have something for Mr. Bear. She pulls away from her normal routine of shy support from the background to develop into a potent force at the end of the episode. She threatens to drag Kadota in front of the Merchant Board personally and does so with a sweet-hearted expression that inspires terror in all. Her final speech in front of the board was loaded with confidence and determination. Each scene was expertly acted by Tia Ballard, and I absolutely loved it.

P.A. Works keeps up the good work on the animation here. There is a great amount of subtle emotion in the expressions made, and shifts in those feelings shift well from one expression to the next. I feel that they worked extremely hard in making a study of those shifts without turning the entire thing into a melodrama. We see Ririko cooking as her grandmother talks to her. She tastes her soup, and barely moves her eyes, showing how much she dislikes it without making overtures to demonstrate it. Her grandmother tries it, as well, and drops her eyes in the same exact way. They then agree to order in. Other animes would have had an overblown reaction, but here the tiny, simple movements set up for the line and makes the light punchline have a bit more zing. She even agrees with an impeccably executed nod. The studio just knows what they’re doing, and it blows me away that they chose this simple slice-of-life story as a demonstration of their skill. I give it eight Deluxe Manju out of ten.