Kuragehime - Episode 9

Last episode took Kuranosuke's big business idea from making jellyfish dolls to jellyfish dresses, and as this ninth episode of the series begins that plan begins to grow and blossom in his mind.

These burgeoning plans are, of course, partly helped by Tsukimi's passion and knowledge for her subject, and to carry on planning things out Kuranosuke decides that they need to decamp to his place to get the job done properly - something which Tsukimi is a little reticent about lest his brother be around.  Of course, as is so often the case with these things the timing of these events couldn't be much worse, with Shuu taking Inari to see his father in the hope of ending the crazy goings-on currently surrounding him.

Things really couldn't get much worse for all parties concerned at this point, as they congregate by the front gate of the Koibuchi resident just in time for Inari to claim that she's slept with Shuu before presenting her "proof" of this fact right in Tsukimi and Kuranosuke's face in the light of their denials that such a thing would even be possible.  So, both Shuu and Tsukimi end up running away from these unwanted thoughts and possibilities, although the former of the pair at least returns to continue to talk to Inari while the latter looks to escape from her reality completely by retreating into sleep, alcohol and jellyfish-coloured dreams.

While last week's episode of Kuragehime played out largely as a pure and simple comedy, this episode had a far broader stroke to its brush - sure, there was still comedy there (not least from chauffeur Hanamori, who seems to be getting all the best lines at the moment), but there was also romance and emotion sprinkled with a little dash of politics to boot.  It's the emotional side of the episode that arguably took centre stage this time around, not via in your face tears and drama but instead by way of some relatively subtle scenes which again seem to draw Tsukimi and Kuraonsuke unwittingly together in many respects.  There still seems like a huge amount left to cover in just two episodes, but given how well its played its various cards so far I certainly hope Kuragehime isn't going to try to rush towards a climax in the name of getting everything settled.