Friday 9 May 2014

Nanana's Buried Treasure - Episode 5

All is well once again in the aftermath of last week's somewhat chaotic episode - so much so that Isshin is now offering to take his Adventure Club chums on a trip to a hot springs, which also just so happens to be the purported home of another piece of the Nanana Collection.

Fun though the prospect of a hot springs weekend might be, Yuugo has a lot on his plate in the run-up to this weekend away - aside from the fact that Nanana refuses to give him any hints about the piece of her collection that might reside there, he's also faced with another concerted attempt to persuade him return to the fold of Matsuri and his father.  This is something which Yuugo still refuses to countenance, although he similarly seems determined to give no hints as to exactly why he's so staunchly against working with them.


The fallout from this decision however is the rescinding of Yuugo's allowance by his father, leaving him seriously short of cash but with a hefty utilities bill to pay (clearly, British Gas serves Nanaejima Island).  With strict rules on working hours for those studying on the island, it's time for our protagonist to take on the employment black market, leaving him with a job that takes him into the most lawless and dangerous district of the island with a suitcase filled with white powder...

The main joy of Nanana's Buried Treasure as it proceeds is that it's silly but it knows it - it embraces its cliches and ever-dafter plot points and runs with them, but remembers to never take itself too seriously for the most part.  On the flip side, the show's scatter-shot storytelling is its biggest issue at present - at times it feels like I've dozed off for a moment and missed something, but I assume that isn't the case and that the series is simply jumping too quickly from place to place in a way that isn't always satisfying.  In fairness, this occasionally seems to be deliberate to lead in to later reveals or to add some mystery to proceedings, but the manner in which its enacted is certainly less than satisfying.  On balance though, I'm still having a lot of fun with Nanana's Buried Treasure, so its positive attributes continue to outweigh the negatives.

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