Mr. Osomatsu Season 2

Episode 21

Watching the boys get drunk at Cafe Himatsuya is a bit like playing the designated driver for your friends. Once the blood alcohol levels diverge too far, your perception of humor no longer overlaps as much as usual. The fun is in watching them have fun with the silliest things, not the ding-dong joke itself. And when the fun is ruined by what looks like a wannabe delinquent character escaped from a different anime, it's still sad.

After a silly but fairly docile night out, things get significantly weirder in another dimension, as female Totty looks for the kind of job she can do for a short while to make lots of money. Naturally, the chosen career path is becoming an idol, but the way down that path leads through shady back-alleys full of cats and peculiar custom services. In the end, the extremely annoying and painfully catchy BANANA song's premise of "spas, nails, gourmet, condos, way too fancy" attracts every female cast member to a possibly imagined world of idol stardom in one of Mr. Osomatsu's more random side segments.

This week's main story revolves around Matsuyo trying to decide on her least favorite child to send away to a shady but promising NEET correctional facility. While every child wants to hear that they're their parents' favorite, all the sextuplets need to achieve to keep on living the good life is avoid being the one she loves the least. And while Mama Matsu has some trouble identifying any positive qualities in her sons, she's still fond of them all hanging around for longer. On the one hand, the big group hug following her meltdown over the inability to let even one of them go (and their attempt to bribe Papa Matsu into naming favorites) is heartwarming. Loving their children no matter what, the Matsunos seem prepared to let their offspring mooch off them until the day they die. Still, it's not just about accepting their sons' flaws, but enabling them never having to work on their selfish immaturity.

Matsuyo and Matsuzō have displayed their fair share of strange behavioral patterns over time, and their sons didn't end up NEETs forever out of nowhere. Recognizing the sextuplets in their parents has been an amusing pastime – this week especially with Papa and Karamatsu's exchange of English excitement. And if Matsuzō is willing to put all retirement plans on hold so he'll be able to continue feeding eight adults, who am I to judge – especially since we wouldn't be getting many episodes out of Mr. Osomatsu once everyone has grown up and finally moved out.

Handing over one of your kids to a too-tanned door-to-door salesman to turn them into a productive member of society for free screams either abuse or scam, but a tiny dosage of tough love surely wouldn't hurt these manchildren. As long as the brothers still have enough money to dine and drink out at Himatsuya's, any incentive for change will be as short-lived as Osomatsu feeling guilty over last week's wallet story.

Episode 21 wasn't Mr. Osomatsu at its funniest, zaniest or most touching, but a few highlights included Matsuyo preparing color-coded cards with Silhouette Images of her sons to help her decide who should go, and Jyushimatsu being taken off the list not for his virtues, but for the fact that no one could ever be trusted with taking care of him.

Rating: B-

Mr.Osomatsu Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Anne is a translator and fiction addict who writes about anime at Floating Words and on Twitter.