Minami-ke Tadaima - Episode 3

This week's Minami-ke begins with something of an homage to the funniest thing the show as a whole has ever produced - of course, it doesn't work quite so well this time around but hey, I'm certainly not going to knock the nostalgic reference.

Anyhow, that aside this latest instalment of Tadaima has all sorts of things to consider, for example how long one should take to have a bath.  Once lighting-fast bather Touma mentions that brother Natsuki spends forever in the bath, she inadvertently sets off a whole chain of events regarding Haruka and her friends which in turn propagates a number of misunderstandings.

Elsewhere, there's some discussion and scientific experimentation regarding the nature of airheads, some embarrassment as an argument about who has the nicest fingers between Haruka's friends turns into a hunt for a missing ring, and the mysterious case of the missing donut which leads to a depressing evening for poor Haruka.  Oh, and there are a number of maid outfits on show this week - I mean, everyone has at least one emergency maid outfit in their house, right?

All of this combines into another decidedly fun episode of Minami-ke Tadaima - funny in places, but providing light-hearted entertainment throughout courtesy of a lovable (if occasionally stupid) roster of characters doing lovable (if occasionally stupid) things.  I'm not sure how I feel about the shift of this series towards dipping occasionally into fan service-esque territory (and maybe I'm just misremembering the content of previous series of the show) as it feels a bit forced and needless for this kind of outing, but after a slightly tepid start I've warmed up to this return of Minami-ke pretty quickly to the point where I'm actually kind of glad it's returned to our screens.