Poco's Udon World

Episode 11

Throughout the course of Poco's Udon World, many of the key players have been forced to confront their various inadequacies and change their lives accordingly. With so few problems left to solve, it makes sense for the show to shift the focus to its titular character, who's having trouble keeping his transformation intact. It looks like Souta's relative lack of caution regarding his adoptive son's true nature and Poco's inability to remain in human form may finally give way to some genuine consequences.

With Souta, Rinko, and Nakajima more or less settled into their stations in life, Souta begins to plan for his life with Poco—starting with looking at local daycares. Happy to be semi-employed, the newly energized Souta gladly accepts a job from Team Planet to help promote and livestream the upcoming Takamatsu Festival. Even Rinko and Nakajima have started to accept that Poco isn't normal, but both choose to avoid pressing the issue. Despite the recent unwieldiness of Poco's transformation abilities, Souta takes him to the festival without any sort of emergency plan in place. When Poco's tail unexpectedly pops out in the middle of the festivities, it's not only seen by a number of local children, it's also captured on the livestream.

While it's clear that Souta has finally found what will make him happy in life, it's unclear whether or not things will actually go his way. For one thing, he hasn't really considered the logistics of the situation, like whether Poco is actually going to age in the same manner as a human being. As if to underscore the difference between Souta's expectations and Poco's animal nature, Poco interrupts Souta's daycare search by wildly chasing a frog through the house. However, Souta is so happy to be back home, employed, and living with Poco that he doesn't give much thought to some very likely contingencies.

It's understandable given the show's length, but I can't help but feel that a number of potentially fascinating secondary characters have remained underdeveloped. For instance, in subsequent appearances, Manabu has only shown small hints of the eccentric behavior he displayed back in episode 8. Also, beyond her cartoonish desire to eat Tawara udon, we know virtually nothing about Shunsuke's sister Sae. But there's only so much screen time to go around in a one-cour series.

With the finale in sight, it will be interesting to see if Souta can provide a satisfactory explanation for the tail incident. Fortunately, since it wasn't a full-on transformation, I doubt explaining it away will prove immensely difficult. At the very least, Shunsuke isn't likely to believe any excuses Souta offers up. (He may even be able to shed some light on why the transformations have gotten so wonky.) In keeping with the laidback tone of the show, I doubt anything too world-shattering will come of Poco's tail-slip, but I'm looking forward to seeing if it will finally prompt Souta to reveal the truth to his friends and Rinko.

Rating: B+

Poco's Udon World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Amy is a YA fantasy author who has loved anime for over two decades.