Something that immediately struck me as odd this episode is the lack of Anko or Bashame. Those two only appear at the very end so 99% of this episode is just Nokotan and Koshitan. This is probably on purpose given what the show is setting up for the finale. More on that in a bit. I don’t mind it anyway since frankly, I think I prefer it when it’s just the original two main characters.
We begin the penultimate episode with Koshitan’s peaceful day getting immediately derailed by Nokotan sleeping during the last class. Nokotan keeps creating comically large snot bubbles (with her antlers and not her nose because that would make sense) and her idle state attracts a lot of birds so it’s not like Koshitan can ignore her and move on. The scenario is funny enough but I don’t know, I’m pretty tired of Koshitan being the only one who acknowledges all the whacky stuff that’s going on (as whacky, I mean). The last punchline where Koshitan blurts out in her sleep that someone still has their clothes tag on also falls flat for me.
Much of this episode is dedicated to a plot in which matagi from Hokkaido named Soichiro Kumatori (Jirō Saitō) has arrived at the school to capture Nokotan. Having encountered Kumatori beforehand, Nokotan immediately begins hiding and evading the hunter to the best of her abilities. The premise alone is ridiculous but what makes it even funnier is that this is actually a bit of continuity coming full circle. Many episodes ago, Nokotan told Koshitan that she’s been running away from some hunters. That was played off as a potential lie but lo and behold, we see Nokotan might have been telling the truth as someone is very much trying to capture her.
The cat and mouse game starts off simple enough with Kumatori trying to track Nokotan down on school grounds and Nokotan managing to escape one way or another. You’d think Nokotan would win by simply leaving the school but for whatever reason, she remains at the building all night and until the next morning. To be fair, I think my favorite gag in all of this is Kumatori placing a bunch of night vision cameras and cage in the hopes of trapping Nokotan without needing to search for her all night, only for Nokotan to escape anyway. By sunrise, Kumatori and Nokotan decide to confront each other on the rooftop. The standoff frankly lasts a bit too long for my liking, though that’s maybe because I haven’t seen Full Metal Jacket. At the same time however, it gets cut short since Kumatori is forced by his wife to go back home. I don’t know what’s funnier: him getting arrested on his way home for carrying a gun or that it’s only after bothering a public school for a whole day that he finally gets the cops’ attention.
The last segment of the episode isn’t funny per se but it’s a nice, wholesome look at the relationship between the original two main characters. Koshitan notices Nokotan wearing a worn tracksuit while she’s getting her school uniform cleaned so she offers to take her friend shopping. The two struggle to get to the store however due to the show making no sense and Nokotan’s irrational fear of plastic bottles (that’s an apparent phobia of Nokotan’s and I don’t really get it). Once it becomes clear that they’re not going shopping, Koshitan decides to instead sew some cute patches onto the tracksuit. While showing her handiwork to the club, Koshitan more or less admits that she does see Nokotan as her friend.
During the post-credit scene, Koshitan notices that Nokotan is nowhere to be found and she’s the only one who remembers her. Once I got to this scene, it made a lot more sense as to why this episode was going for a more earnest tone towards the end. The show is clearly setting up for a more emotional finale. I admit that I’m a little skeptical here. I have been vying for the show to give me something other than absurdist humor, especially as the comedy started to get stale for me. But I don’t know, the show rarely does something serious so it seems too late to do it now.
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