Wash It All Away

Episode 8

One of the first things this week's episode hits us with is that Kinme's social media boost was horribly short-lived. Something that took the whole of the previous episode faded away in the next, spanning just a week for Kinme. Meaning it's all rendered pointless and obsolete. Considering how half-baked the social media episode already was, I should by all means be disappointed by this. I'm not. This episode is far from perfect, either, but the introduction of a new character who gels well with Kinme helps make for a nice episode you can mindlessly zone out to for twenty minutes.

Her name is Uka Hatsuaya, and she works at the tourism division of the city hall. And she's got anxiety too; she's awkward around people, she stutters, her mouth is often agape, and she reveals that she got her job because she thought she wouldn't have to talk to people. The anxious tics, the hairstyle, and those reddish-pink eyes make me feel she's Mizore-from-Eupho-coded, and that's something I can get behind if true. It's cliché, but it's fitting.

Uka hits it off with Kinme right off the bat, because of course she would. Kinme makes friends with practically everybody she meets. I'd also imagine that it would be hard for Kinme to turn down Uka after having such an intimate bathing together in a public bathhouse. It's a scene the episode throws at us to have that necessary moment of understanding needed to seal the deal on their friendship. It could have been done literally anywhere else, but the show has a fan service quota to fulfill, and it leaps at whatever opportunity it can get.

The episode's first half is just okay at best, but its build-up pays nicely in the final half. Kinme spends her day off at a pier in Hatsushima with Uka for a one-off modeling gig, which allows the episode to make room for its main course, a hot, steaming plate of “turn your brain off” fun. They hit the pier together, they eat food together, and they snap lots and lots of photos together. The photoshoots are made into montages that are so obviously there to promote Hatsushima's real-life tourism, but I just like how they show Kinme and Uka vibing together.

I'm definitely overthinking things here when I say this, but still, having just gotten done with an episode of Dead Account that threw in a still montage that added nothing, I view the montages of this week's Wash as kind of a positive antithesis. Dead Account is filled with unlikeable characters whose personalities and chemistries are barely fleshed out. Their montages continue to skim over their development, and I'm left feeling nothing. Wash It All Away's Kinme and Uka aren't amazing characters either, and they are riddled with cliches. And yet, even though we've known Uka for less than twenty minutes, her adorkability somehow makes her likeable enough to make her relationship with the also likeable, if a bit bubbly, Kinme work out. I don't feel like any character development is skimmed on these photo montages. They show the two having fun, taking their friendship to new heights, and because the anime has put time into actually giving the tiniest, mildest damn about these characters thus far, it feels that much more of a rewarding watch. I like these characters even more, and it makes everything feel more natural.

Along with the show shoving in unnecessary fan service for titillation, we see a flock of the most unmoving seagulls flying through the air without flapping their wings once, and the amnesia plot point is uselessly brought up as a kind of buzzer-beater during the show's final moments. This episode has its flaws, but I'm not bothered by them. These usual laid-back vibes of Wash It All Away really deliver here in this episode, and I'm hoping that Uka remains part of the roster.

This episode is titled “That Was Too Impressive.” It is definitely not that impressive, but it's good enough.

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Wash It All Away is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.