English Dub Review: KakuriyoBed and Breakfast for Spirits- “An Elderly Ayakashi Couple’s Wedding Anniversary”

Living in the spirit world comes with its dangers.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Following last week’s development, Aoi has found herself trapped in a basement while she was out getting ingredients to make dinner for the two lordly Ayakashi celebrating their anniversary at her bed and breakfast.

Rain soon falls and Aoi finds herself in grave danger, as the basement begins filling up with water. She nearly drowns when she’s saved by Oodanna at the last moment. Turns out, the perpetrators of the crime were the castle’s head chef’s jealous underlings, but with their fate in her hands, Aoi shows them mercy. Her position in the castle has certainly risen to a level of some prominence.

As her friends try to help her recuperate, Aoi sets herself to preparing for the big dinner. The elderly Ayakashi couple soon arrives and are enchanted by Aoi’s food. A good time is had by all as the couple enjoys the food of the Apparent Realm that Aoi specializes in.

Despite her persistence, Aoi eventually passes out from exhaustion near the end of the dinner. As she is nursed back to health, Ginji explains to Oodanna that he suspects some kind of powerful spirit was behind Aoi’s attack. The two are uncertain of who it might be, but settle in the realization that this is not over.

Our Take:

This week’s foray into the strange and uncomfortable world of Kakuriyo offers an episode that actually has a few good moments, coupled with a lot of functional problems that hamstring the story a great deal.

I was getting excited at the end of last week’s episode and was actually happy to see how the “Aoi kidnapped” subplot worked out. I initially groaned when it turned out to be the chef’s staff doing some kind of lame prank, but was impressed when it turned out to be an actual larger conflict of some kind at work. Though, I have to say, the way the show had Aoi forgive the chef’s staff who imprisoned her was just ridiculous. Its a ghoulish example of the kind of “Fan fiction-y” character Aoi really is. Her inability to do anything wrong and constantly astound the spirits around her is Mary Sue incarnate. Its hard to have empathy for a character’s situation when she is constantly spoiled with success, adventure, and a host of cute spirits adoring her in her ever-expanding harem.

Coupled with the endurance test of watching Aoi meticulously prepare her ingredients, you get an episode that slows to a molasses crawl. Some shows understand that watching an anime character do mundane things is not inherently interested, so compensate by adding interesting visuals or direction to keep the viewer interested, but not this episode of Kakuriyo. The montage of Aoi cooking the Ayakashi’s food is not only boring but incomplete. It looks like the animators didn’t have time to actually do the animation, so just give us a minute and a half slideshow of different cooking scene storyboards. If a scene can’t actually be completed, then it really shouldn’t be in the episode at all.

But, if you can suffer through the dull drum, you are treated to a rather enjoyable moment of the two elderly Ayakashi enjoying a meal together. Though I don’t find it well earned, its one of the more heartwarming scenes. The kind of thing that I imagine the audience for this series might actually watch it for.

The series has a long way to go before I can consider it to be worthwhile creatively, but at least for the time being, it appears that more interesting things are on the horizon. If you’re already watching Kakuriyo this far, then look forward to it, as it appears that the series actually wants to get the ball rolling a bit.