No, I'm not kidding - This entire episode is an attempt by the café's staff to create a cold noodle dish, using Arashi's memories of said dish from her youth as a basis for their efforts. Needless to say, most of these efforts fail miserably, until it seems like Jun finally happens across the perfect combination of ingredients... or has she? Throw in some confusion caused by others adding their own "finishing touches" to the dish and a quick-fire session of crazed time-travelling, and it soon becomes impossible for anyone to tell exactly what's what.
I'm not really sure what counts as filler within this series any more (it hardly has a strict rule for what stack up as major plot points these days), but this certainly feels like it no matter how you dress it up - Truth be told, it all felt rather predictable and like the kind of stuff we've seen from Natsu no Arashi too many times before, leaving what might once have been at least mildly amusing to be a little tired and unfunny. Much like those cold noodles, the whole thing felt like quite the anti-climax by the end of it all, and no matter how much fun SHAFT has animating these episodes it can't really paper over the wafer-thin content.
It is part of SHAFT's hit-or-miss style of anime production. Sometimes, they'll have an episode of a series (including both Natsu no Arashi titles) that has me in the floor in stitches. Then other times, they have an episode like this one which is a complete dud.
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