Wash It All Away

Episode 5

In the previous episode review, I said that this series has yet to wow me, although I thought that things were starting to pick up. This episode seems to bring things back down. It succeeds in keeping its delightful monotone vibe intact, but at the cost of the latter half's festival and parade sequence feeling a bit underutilized.

This fifth entry in Wash It All Away has Kinme racing to beat the clock, forcing herself to wash loads of moldy laundry overnight in time for the next day's festivities. She does it all by herself, meaning Kyuushou, Kuriru, and Moruda are left to linger in the background. They don't let themselves get involved, so they instead exchange words about Kinme's amnesia. Which would have been fine if the conversation had more meaning than reminding the audience that, yes, this plotline is still a thing, but no, it's not going to be developed in this episode. I remain curious to see how this amnesia develops, although I mildly dislike how the show keeps teasing me with it. It all begs the question: if you don't plan on expanding the amnesia plotline in any meaningful way, why even mention it at all? Especially for two episodes in a row?

The best part of this episode is how its relaxed pacing is utilized in the first half. Having to wash all that laundry in such a short time is stressful. If Wash It All Away were a dumb comedy anime, it would probably exaggerate that stress by having characters move around frantically, screaming and yelling, all while loud, zany music plays to such an excessive degree. Instead, the episode's first half is paced slowly and matter-of-factly, and the decision to have so little music play is smart. There are no horns that blare, barely a piano whose plinks the audience can be distracted by, and we can therefore focus more on how Kinme calmly manages herself through her work. It's a very small, subtle detail that adds so much here.

Kinme finally gets to the festival just in time for the last half of the episode. For something that's been so built up by this point, I expected things to be a bit more lively, and it just...isn't. I feel like the show is so focused on being chill that even the tiniest burst of excitement would be too much. The animation is very static in its festival sequences, which is typically fine, given that this is not the type of anime to try to force sakuga. But could we do a little bit more than just still imagery montaging the opening moments of the festival? Nairo's drumming practice from the last episode also goes to waste. She's barely drumming on screen, and when she does, it still looks a bit stinted.

I've mentioned before that Kinme is a stock cute anime girl, and now in this fourth episode, I'm starting to notice how the anime likes to revel in her ditzy side. Remember how she fell after falling asleep on turmeric pills in episode two? It is repeated here in this episode. She falls after falling asleep in her chair again, and later on, falls from atop the festival float. Throwing this unnecessary klutziness makes her seem more cliched and trite. Maybe now that the festival is over, we can see her perform other tasks that reveal more sides to her? We'll have to see.

Rating:

---

Wash It All Away is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.