Hanasaku Iroha - Episode 22

Never mind the marriage of Takako and Enishi, there are more dramatic events at stake for this twenty-second episode of Hanasaku Iroha - if you thought that things had come to a head between Ohana and Minko last week, you haven't seen the half of it.

First and foremost though, Takako certainly seems determined to get as much mileage as possible out of Kissuiso's staff in the run-up to the wedding, waking them up at 4am to give them the maximum possible preparation time.  Meanwhile, Yuina, Ohana and Nako succeed in completing Takako's wedding dress - the only trouble is finding a suitable person to try it out on.  Minko seems like the perfect candidate, but it's fair to say that her mind is elsewhere to put it mildly...

Thus, when Minko's bad attitude in the face of being presented with the dress flares up, so we enter another outright cat-fight between herself and Ohana as they both shout from the rooftops about their respective crushes and what they want to and should do about them.  The trouble is, Minko doesn't realise that Tohru is watching the whole thing, letting the cat (to continue the feline metaphors) well and truly out of the bag.  Even worse, Tohru doesn't wish to reciprocate Minko's feelings beyond  having some respect for her, although at least with the air cleared Minko can refocus and decide what she wants to do next with her particular one-side crush.  This means that all is well come the day of the wedding and everything runs perfectly to plan - although once it's all over and Kissuiso returns to normal, its manager has a rather shocking announcement to make...

After setting up some pretty aggressive drama between Ohana and Minko last week and continuing it this, at least this instalment of Hanasaku Iroha had the common sense to put an end to it all without everything boiling over, effectively restoring the status quo in the kind of way you'd expect at the end of a teenage squabble over love.  That aside, there isn't really a huge amount of interest to discuss as far as Enishi's wedding is concerned, with all of the focus inevitably falling on the possible closure of Kissuiso at the end of the episode - a threat which will surely hang over the remainder of the series as it comes towards its natural end.