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Akebi's Sailor Uniform
Episode 5

by Mercedez Clewis,

How would you rate episode 5 of
Akebi's Sailor Uniform ?
Community score: 4.3

Episode 4, “I Want to Learn Lots” keeps the good times rolling with new student Ohkuma Minoru, a girl fascinated with all things fauna and nature. She is, like so many children in Japan: deeply invested in bugs to a curious, earnest extent. It's a perfect way to immediately establish her character as being just as dedicated to a specific thing as Komichi, and serves as the immediate plot link to connect both girls post-OP.

From Minoru's perspective, Komichi is curious. She's a girl that lives life without a care: or perhaps, she's a girl that lives life with care at the center, unafraid of the natural world, including when a Japanese rat snake makes it way into the school. And she's also a girl that catalogues her life and the world around her, which is something she and Minoru have in common. Only Komichi isn't good at doing this in secret. She's a bit too overt about things, and tends to meddle: unlike Minoru, she interferes directly in the observable word, whether that's by directly lifting up a shorter student so they can reach the top row on a vending machine or eavesdropping on a private conversation. She just can't help it.

And yet it's this overt nature -this tendency to get right into the mix- that makes Komichi such a likable “heroine” at this point. It's what makes her so delightful and so charming. That is until she sneezes while she and co-researcher Minoru are hiding, resulting in her knocking Minoru into another student's breasts where she promptly gets stuck. So, mostly charming: enough that the rest of the episode, which is really a deep dive into how two young girls view the world, is still enjoyable.

Thus far, Akebi's Sailor Uniform has been interesting. Its premiere starts off with a lot of Content™ that certainly sets the show up to grow into being something very different. And yet now, it's leaning in the direction of being the gorgeous, thoughtful slice-of-life series it hinted at being. Episode 5 is blessedly bereft of the sexual content (99% of it, at least) that plagued the first fourth of the series. Now, it's this go-nowhere series that's deeply invested in what it means to be coming of age in middle school, a time more fraught and frenetic than senior high. And yet that go-nowhere quality is exactly what I want. It's a fascinating study about being a (cis) girl in the countryside trying to well, figure out who you might potentially want to become over the next three years.

Episode 5 soundly shifts Akebi into “pretty good” territory, following Komichi through vignettes that make the mundane magnificent and the everyday extraordinary. While not perfect -the episode is quite sluggish in a few sections- it's a sweet tale, and while it's not necessarily going to make the same impact as some of Winter 2022's other offerings, I do think that this story has the potential to make this season much less lonely, and honestly isn't that enough of a reason for a beautiful series like this to exist?

There's truly something beautiful about witnessing Komichi and Minoru's friendship this episode: a special something that wasn't present in Kei or Touko's episodes. Perhaps it's because this episode is so full of the foibles of youth: perhaps it's because Komichi is just so darn charming that you can't help but like the kid. Whatever it is, I'd like a heaping helping as we head into the remainder of the show. Call me optimistic, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Komichi grow her small, sprawling world a bit more each Sailor Suit Sundays.

Rating:

Akebi's Sailor Uniform is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Mercedez is a JP-EN translation and localization Editor & Proofreader/QA, pop culture critic, and a journalist who, when not writing for ANN, writes for Anime Feminist, where she's a staff editor, and for But Why Tho?. She's also a frequent cohost on the Anime Feminist Podcast, Chatty AF. This season, she's reflecting on her youth with Akebi's Sailor Uniform. When she's not writing and reviewing, you can find her on her Twitter or on her Instagram where she's always up to something.


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