YuruYuri - Episode 5

Aww, how nice, Kyoko has invited Ayano on a surprise trip with her and a couple of the other girls.  But what is the mystery destination to which they're headed?

Why, they're off to Comiket of course (let's dispense with the silly faux event name), with Kyoko all set to sell her latest doujinshi at the event and Ayano and company left tagging along to help her with this slice of business.  This being the event is and Kyoko being who she is, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that Ayano, Chitose and Yui end up having to cosplay, while Chitose soon finds herself more than a little distracted by the cornucopia of yuri doujinshi on sale - a find which ensures that no glasses removal is required, I would wager.

After this relative success, the second half of the episode spins off into examining another of the show's love/hate relationships as we check out Sakurako and Himawari during a studying session which presses all the usual buttons of rivalry and grudging, hidden admiration that have been laid down by this show already.  To close things off, a discussion between Chinatsu and Akari takes a turn for the sexy as some misconstrued talking points about who the former likes turns into her wanting to "practice" kissing with Akari.  Needless to say, this makes for an uncomfortable moment for Chinatsu as the true object of her affections walks in at just the wrong moment.

To get this off my chest straight off the bat - this episode wasn't particularly funny, simply because it's already overly relying on the well-worn groove of lesbian jokes and other pre-existing gags that YuruYuri has been relying upon from day one.  The only moment which got a giggle out of me was the further self-referential mention of Akari's plain personality, more importantly as they pertained to her missile hair buns at that particular point in time - again, not a new joke, but at least it worked for me.  Although the seed for future episodes has perhaps been sown by the relative drama served up at the end of the episode (which I actually feel a bit uncomfortable about in itself), I simply don't see where the series is going to go from here as it already seems to have run out of new gags to put forward while its existing running jokes have also run out of steam.