Recap: Hime has a cold and some of her friends from school come to visit, much to Ao’s frustration. In a completely unrelated segment, we also learn a bit more about Juli and her reasons for being in Sakura Newtown.

Aqua’s thoughts: While the last episode of Yozakura Quartet made some clever use of a shared location to tie together several plot-important scenes, this episode was not so lucky, resulting in a rather disjointed mish-mash of slice-of-life fluff and loose ends. The first half of the episode consisted mainly of Ao getting unreasonably mad at Hime’s classmates crashing at her place and acting like only anime schoolgirls can act. If you ever hear an actual teenager mouth the phrase “Hey, I’m gonna grope you”, I recommend you immediately check into the nearest rehabilitation clinic. Loads of adorable hilarity aside, this segment mostly served to establish Ao as the mum of the quartet, rather than just the panty shot machine… though, not without a fat lot of panty shots, that is.

Distinctly more interesting was the second half, in which we learn how Juli grew up from an uptight high school graduate into the cool big sis who struts around in her undies and spouts more tease than a Bakemonogatari character at their best. It’s almost as if Sakura Newtown turns people into lovable perverts or something. As the oldest member of the cast’s younger generation, her backstory comes with a very welcome guest spot for Hime’s grandma — and a not so very welcome one for “feminist” Yuuhi –, who schools Juli in the noble arts of aikido and not taking yourself so damn seriously. It is a nice little story about growing up and the inherent hypocrisy in hating adults because you can’t be one yourself, and one that will prove important in the very near future.

Sakura Newtown’s regular cutie pie nurse won’t get any awards for backstory originality, however, and her case certainly isn’t helped by the anime skipping over the manga chapters explaining a bit more about Dr. Frankenstein and how he arrived in town. On the other hand, some things are better left to the imagination. Anyone who can put two and two together can see how grandma badass’ guidance turned Juli from stuffy English bookworm into the hospital hottie everyone in town knows and loves. The most interesting plot thread we get from this flashback is one little offhand remark about a supposedly dead little sister, and you’d have to be literally blind to not see who I’m talking about here.

Random observations

• As you might have noticed, Juri is officially Juli now, as revealed by this piece of official… uhm, artwork. Not that Juli sounds any more English than Juri. It’s gotta be Julie, right? Man, I give up.
• Gotta love that generic Wii rip-off Hime’s classmates are playing, including controllers that look like phone receivers.
• Never leave your kids around Hime, she’ll unceremoniously drop her off her back. Poor Mina.
• One important thing of notice, in case you want to know — the daughter Juli mentions is none other than Mariabelle.
• The anime doesn’t make this clear, but in case you want to know, Yuuhi and Yae can change their appearance at will. Usually Yuuhi looks like a little boy to conserve energy, and because Mariabelle likes him better this way, but for official occasions he’ll turn into an adult. Conserving power through de-aging seems to be a common thing in the Yozakura Quartet universe, though. Kana, Mina and Tomoe from the Tsuki ni Naku OVAs do it as well.