Wagaya no Oinari-sama - Episode 5

After episode four's focus on Miyako, episode five of Wagaya no Oinari-sama carried in on a similar vein, with Kuugen still seemingly fretting over Tohru's continuing hurt that he never really got to know his mother. Thus, this episode sees Kuu try to use her power to do something about this in typically irresponsible fashion.

Again, we see a similar mix of emotion with a brief burst of action, none of which really felt particularly convincing. Tohru's emotional reactions later in the episode were a little weak, and when all of the characters involved in a battle are so blatantly pulling their punches even the action sequences are left feeling sterile. Strip away all of that, and you're left with a pretty bland mix that, in the case of those action scenes, almost literally adds up to nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

With a 'bad guy' who is only interested in collecting material for decent souvenirs to sell, two goody two-shoes brothers and a pretty generic pair of powerful characters who we're supposed to be cheering on, I just really can't see what Wagaya no Oinari-sama is going to do to keep things ticking along for the entire remainder of the series. It looks like at least the next episode will return to being some kind of slice of life comedy (replete with fan service galore), and to be honest right now that seems to be its best bet, and it's proved to at least be more entertaining than these tedious action segments every week. Something certainly needs to change quite majorly to lift the show out of the pool of mediocrity in which it currently resides.