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Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid
Episode 11

by Rebecca Silverman,

How would you rate episode 11 of
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid ?
Community score: 4.5

It's been unseasonably cold where I live for the past month, so I could really empathize with Tohru, Kobayashi, and Kanna this week when they didn't want to get out from under their brand-new kotatsu. The ladies won it in a raffle at the shopping district, which was somewhat surprising, given that first prize was a hot springs visit. In almost any other show, Tohru would have used her powers to make sure that they won that, adding an obligatory hot springs visit to the beach and school festival episodes – but instead, they won the heated table. It says a lot about Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid that things played out this way. Not only is it slyly avoiding a standard story trope, but it's also a marker of how the series has more of a focus on cozy family moments than wacky fanservice. Much of the humor comes not from the fact that Tohru loves a human woman, but instead from the ways that dragons think and function differently from other people. Tohru may still love Kobayashi, but we've come a long way from her pronouncement of sexual love in the earliest episodes to the comfortable life that the group has settled into. Seeing Tohru, Kobayashi, and Kanna snuggled up under the kotatsu eating what must be a bushel of mandarin oranges is far more rewarding than anything more overt, and it shows how far the characters have progressed. They're comfortable and secure in their familial atmosphere, while we still have Lucoa for all that fanservice stuff.

She's definitely still providing it, although thankfully not by harassing poor Shouta this week. (Mostly. I don't think she orchestrated his New Year's nightmare, at least not deliberately.) After roughly a week spent in kotatsu bliss, Kanna asks Kobayashi to help her put on a kimono to go to her first temple visit of the year, courtesy of an invitation from Riko. (She's also provided the kimono.) This leads to everyone meeting up at the temple, with all the dragons suitably attired. Tohru is wearing Kobayashi's kimono, and presumably Fafnir is wearing Makoto's, which is a bit of a shame, since we've never really seen Kobayashi dressed up. Naturally, Lucoa has chosen to wear the most risqué kimono possible, and while she pulls it off well, it's just another moment that makes you wonder if she's in the story for anything besides boobs and Aztec mythology jokes. Of course, even if she is, it's a sharp contrast to most things in the Kobayashi household, so there's something to be said for that.

In terms of major events, this is a very quiet episode. It's focused more on showing us the cozy contentment and warm, peaceful life that Kobayashi and her dragons have built for themselves. The kotatsu is the perfect metaphor for this, with its comfort, warmth, and space for more than one person. Kobayashi didn't have a kotatsu before Tohru and Kanna, and she led a very closed-off, cold life. Now she has both the warmth and people to share it with, which she's clearly enjoying. When she gives Tohru and Kanna New Year's money, both dragons comment that they've never received any before; Kobayashi's voice when she replies that she's never given it out before implies that partaking in the tradition has made her happier than she would have guessed, like when she offers to buy Kanna little things that she wants or attends the dragons' events. She does love her blood-related family, which is evident when she talks to her mother on the phone, but she's found a real sense of familial comfort with the dragons as well, and that's the family she wants to be with right now.

The same is true for Tohru, who makes a few brief remarks about her own dragon family and how she feels that her life is with Kobayashi in the human realm now, even though she does want to go back at some point. In manga volume two, we do briefly meet Tohru's father, so I'll be interested to see if that happens in this adaptation – it would make for a nice rounding out of the story's themes for Kobayashi to understand that what's true for her is also really true for Tohru. Sometimes, the family you create is the one that feels right.

Rating: B+

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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