As funny as it would’ve been for Mako to quit the club on day one, it would admittedly be a bit out of character for her to do that. So while Mako is a bit bummed to learn that the Food Culture Research Club isn’t intended to do research on anything, she agrees with Kurea to just go along with the flow. That said, Mako hasn’t completely given up. A couple scenes later, Mako watches a cooking video by her favorite mascot, Mokotaro, and becomes interested in making pilaf with her new friends. The only issues are whether or not the club would be interested and if Mako can even cook in the first place. I’m a little concerned that Mako constantly has visions of Mokotaro, even picturing herself as the character at one point, but I doubt there’s any actual creepy undercurrent to it…right?
For a club intended to do nothing, they’re ironically pretty productive this episode. The first thing on the to-do list is cleaning out the club room. Luckily for them, Shinon manages to procure a bunch of cleaning supplies from other clubs on the campus. The cleaning scene is pure cute girls fluff but it’s a nice way for the show to establish the group dynamic. I like how balanced the personalities are, with Mako and Kurea serving as the straight men in the group while Shinon and Tsutsuji are the goofballs (though Shinon is definitely more energetic than Tsutsuji).
Once the club is finally able to settle in, they get a visit from Mayumi Ohta (Ayaka Fukuhara), the clerk in charge of overseeing the university’s clubs. Ohta explains that faculty must periodically inspect clubs for legitimate activity, otherwise clubs risk getting dissolved. This is of course a problem for our main characters because the club’s intended to be a front for the girls to do absolutely nothing. Funnily enough, we later learn that Ohta already knows that the Food Culture Research Club is fake. She’s just willing to excuse it if the girls do something productive with it. Fortunately for the club, Ohta decides to do the inspection on the following day, allowing the girls enough time to cobble something together. I like how the girls inspect a copy of the application form like lawyers reading through a legal document when obviously, anything food related ought to suffice.
After a short discussion, the girls settle on cooking some food. This of course gives Mako the perfect chance to try out the pilaf recipe with her friends. While Mako and Kurea buy ingredients, Shinon once again use her connections to grab some cooking supplies, as well as some random junk. I don’t know how the plot could incorporate the unicycle or those tires but damn it, the show better find a way. I quite enjoy the actual cooking and dining scenes. The sunset backdrop and the music Tsutsuji plays on her ukulele adds a very pleasant tone to the cooking tutorial. Very cute that Shinon has a such strong reaction to the pilaf, considering that she was the least interested in the food part of the food club. While this show will probably get distracted and do some more random antics, I hope there’ll plenty more food scenes because this first one is really neat.
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