So, I’m setting the schedule of Kakushigoto’s episodic review to Mondays and have finished the little formula to anaylse each episode. Without further ado, this is Kakushigoto’s Episode 2 – Beach Sandals and B4/Don’t Place, Don’t Draw, Don’t Finish up!
What is this episode about?
A quick look at Gotou’s to-do-list:
- Gyoza-making with the team to escape from reality ☑️
- Disguise beach-visiting as a company trip, to check on Hime ☑️
- Curry-cooking ☑️
- Calling her teacher cute but it’s actually a misunderstanding ☑️
- Manga-drawing with the team in an old vacation house during power outage ☑️
- Do the yearly in-case-Hime-really-does-come-to-the-workplace emergency drill ☑️
- Enjoy festival with Hime while attempting to hide vulgar manga’s merchandise ☑️
- Accept a visit from security police to the workplace due to report by neighbours on suspicious activities ☑️
- Boxes-discovering, and sewn-learning ☑️
Any interesting moment?
One of the things that I’ve noticed more about Kakushigoto’s comedy is how it employs the art of misunderstanding and character’s various reactions to bring out the effect. A group of manga artists cooping up in the workplace with large portion of foods, model guns and women’s tights for reference, also owning a katana sword and a drone with camera. There’s no way you can link them to terrorism, right? RIGHT?
Lesson learnt?
‘There are things in this world that you can’t do nothing about no matter how much you think of them.’ This sounds like a reasonable excuse to escape from reality, but in this context, it’s not. Hime’s teacher’s words to her father subtly link this ‘escape from reality’ part from the Hime’s childhood to her adolescence back in reality, and managed to convey Hime’s contrasting thoughts in these two different timelines.
Everyone has their own ways of escaping reality, and as irresponsible as it is, perhaps this is one thing that we need to do every once in a while to cherish that little moment of freedom. But overdo it, and we might just lose sight of what’s important to us.
To conclude?
This episode shows how overprotective Gotou is, and a hint of something that he’s kept hidden to his daughter more than his work as a vulgar manga artist. This is more apparent when Hime discovered boxes that are meant for her and Gotou didn’t actually prepare them. It’s most likely gifts prepared by her mother in advance, to celebrate her growth, until she becomes 16 years old. But, why stop there?
Near the end of the episode, there’s a short flashback to the reality where Hime is 18 years old. She realised that she never really did ask her father about his work, and later also found a few boxes that were marked with the consecutive years that’d been missing. With the hints given, inside these new boxes are likely to be presents from her father, a dress that he promised to sewn and his best efforts for her to have …
… a happy life.
Last words:
With all the seeds being planted, this might turn out to be more than just comedic slice of life than I initially thought. But right now, I’m just gonna enjoy each episode as it comes. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the upcoming episodes!
Previously on Kakushigoto:
Episode 1: The Thing that Makes Him Happiest..
Anime as a Cup of Tea 