Minami-ke 13 Final. New Years Eve, Juice and Cake?

     This episode begins with Kana telling the younger kids (her group of idiots) including Makoto about the Japanese New Years tradition of the wearing the kimono, she wants Makoto the wear the flowery kimono, and Touma to wear the reserved male kimono. Then we switch to Riko’s place where she is thinking about calling Fujioka and inviting him to a New Years Eves celebration,  and Keiko gives her Fujioka’s phone number. Back at Fujioka’s place, he is practicing the proper way he wants to ask Kana out for a date on New Years Eve, he debates if he should call her -san or -chan, he seems very shy about using the more familiar/endearing -chan form. He keeps trying to call Kana but she’s on the phone with Keiko. Riko tries to call Fujioka who is trying to call Kana who’s on the phone with Keiko, and in the end no one gets through, so what we have is a lot of frustrated teens (or at-least two frustrated teens). Then the focus switches to Hosaka who’s at work in a noodle shop, he seems to be working very hard at creating noodles, then he slips into another one of his fantasies about him, Haruka and their two daughters, and then we find out he’s not really working there, he’s just creating a dinner he wants to take to Haruka. Later that evening the sister are watching the final episode of the student/teacher romance show Ninomiya and Sensei when Haruka’s friend Hayami shows up to hang out with them, she brings a large quantity of imported “juices” with her. Kana doesn’t think that these juices as very good so she doesn’t really drink that much of the juices, I think that she’s figured out that the juices are alcoholic in nature. Hayami and Kana have Haruka and Chiaki play twister and drink large amounts of  “juice”,  and they end up getting “drunk” on the juice. After a while Haruka and Chiaki are passed out from the “juice”, then a little while later two more or their friends show at the house and soon their passed out too, and then only Hayami and Kana are left awake, Hayami is very drunk from the juice at this point, and Hayami starts to get a little frisky in a yuri way with Kana, and at that very moment on the TV Ninomiya-kun and Sensei are getting ready to have their wedding night rewards, and at that moment in the Minami household there’s no one left to save Kana from Hayami (remember Kana, that no one can hear you scream in space/ or in the Minami household when every-one’s passed out). Well and that’s how the series ends, they leave it up to you to decide what happened to Kana, below are some screen shots.

Kana and her band of fools talking about kimono’s

Phone Tag

The triangle of teen frustration.

Hosaka’s cooking and his dreams of Haruka.

Hayami’s arrival, juice, and a game of twister.

More friends arrive and almost everyone passes out.

Ninomiya-kun and Sensei’s wedding night.

Hayami wanting some cake to go along with the juice.

You decide what happened in the end?

     Well the last episode of the first installment of Minami-ke was in many ways the same as all the other episodes from the series, in a nutshell this series was all about the three sister’s interactions with themselves, their strange but likable friends, and the guys that are attracted to the sisters. This episode deals with the issues of frustrations between teens in a large part. Below are some of those issues.

Fujioka is frustrated by his lack of ability to get anywhere with Kana.

Riko is frustrated because Fujioka’s doesn’t even notice her.

Makoto is frustrated by his attraction to Haruka so much so that he resorts to cross-dressing.

Hosaka is frustrated by his lack of courage to just tell Haruka he likes her.

And Chiaki is constantly frustrated by her dumb-ass sister Kana and some of her idiot friends.

     So, in the end, this series was all about relationships and the frustrations that go along with them, by the end of the series the only couple that seems to have gotten any was Ninomiya-kun and Sensei, unless you count the cake that Hayami tried to taste at the end of the episode, but this being anime the first episode of the next Minami-ke series will probably have Hayami passing out at the last minute. But if not, I’ll feel sorry for Fujioka , after that Kana will probably be chasing Riko, Keiko, and Chiaki. The only thing that I felt that was overly unrealistic was that Haruka was just a little too perfect, she really never got angry, frustrated, overworked or wanted anything for herself like any girl of about seventeen would want just once in a while.

     And one final thought to ruin some anime fans’ slice of life fantasies: No, Japan is not loaded with households full of cute teenaged girls living alone just waiting for the right guy to cure their loneliness, you only can wish.