Sara Talks Anime

Officially known in the subtitles on Crunchyroll as “Yikes! The School is a Maze?”, and the standard Japanese title stylizes the interrobang as “!?”. I just prefer the “?!” interrrobang better than the one that puts the exclamation mark before the question mark.

For whatever reason, this episode came out one hour later than I expected it to for this timezone. I’m used to my other shows converting to PDT once that rolls into town, so having to wait for when it would’ve been 5:30 PM PST, thus making it 6:30 PM PDT for when the episode came out. I hope this isn’t a standard thing for Meitantei Precure episodes (or just Precure episodes in general), because this freaking sucks! I had just gotten into the rhythm of hopping onto Crunchyroll at 5:30 PM my timezone for the new episode, so I was hoping that like my other shows, this would’ve been a simple “yeah, get on at regular time” story. I’ll wait until next week before I judge whether this is normal operating procedure for the Precure seasons or not, however.

Anyway, the episode begins with Anna getting introduced in one of the classes! I’m assuming this is the homeroom class, though don’t take my word as 100% proof that it is. Despite how much anime I’ve watched over the years, I can’t nail down the Japanese education system as the drop of a hat yet. But Anna gets to sit next to Mikuru in this class, and during what I assume to be a break, some of Anna and Mikuru’s classmates surround where Anna’s sitting and asking her questions. Thankfully, Mikuru’s there to tell her to answer questions at her own pace.

One of the questions that (inevitably) gets asked is whether they live at the same place…to which they reveal they’re detectives! They don’t reveal the fact that they’re members of Star Detective Precure, though Anna almost outs them! Pochitan also gets noisy, but Pochitan gets excused as a mobile phone by the other students.

Anyway, at the theater where the villains do their their thing, Goemon is sent to the location of the next Makoto Jewel, which just so happens to be the school…again. Thankfully, the swallow statue isn’t the target this time. Goemon makes a trick maze, which activates as Anna and Mikuru walk into what is the science classroom in the standard school, only for it to now be the gym due to the trick maze. The trick maze involves them being sent to various classrooms in the school, solving puzzles, and getting keys to unlock doors for all but one of the puzzles. The final puzzle involved them needing to figure out which door is the door that’ll let them get out of the trick maze. To nobody’s surprise, they get the answer right, and so Goemon brings out the Hanninda.

The magical girl fight is standard for this point in the series, though I did enjoy the ending of the episode. I don’t know, there was just something funny about the ending of the episode. Can’t really get into details about it without getting into what could be considered spoiler territory, but it was still fun.

The preview for the next episode, though…I can see it being a “one and learned my lesson” thing to show that with great power comes great responsibility, and to make sure to use your skills for good, not evil. We’ll see what actually happens when the episode comes out.

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