Kobato is happy that she’s collected a couple of candies for her bottle. However Ioryogi sees a problem: at the rate Kobato is going, it’s going to take forever for her to collect enough to actually fill her bottle.

In any case, Kobato decides to go take a walk since she’s up early, and she runs into Kohaku, who is shedding a couple tears. Kobato asks her why she’s crying, but Kohaku says she doesn’t really know, but remarks it’s because the the pretty green leaves of the trees. The two then introduce each other, and Ioryogi recognizes her as “Kohaku from heaven” and Kohaku remembers Ioryogi and “that Iorogi.”

Kobato then goes on a mission to try to figure out why Kohaku was crying, but can’t figure it out, and ends up following Kohaku to her house when she sees her walking with a man. Kobato hangs out until the man leaves, and then asks Kohaku again, so Hohaku says that whenever she sees something pretty, she wishes the man, Shuichiro, was there, so he could see it too, and starts to cry. Ioryogi remarks that it’s obvious they’re in love, so Kobato asks her if anything else is the problem, so Kohaku says that they’ve never been on a proper date to the amusement park.

Kobato decides to set up a date at the amusement park, but finds that the tickets cost money, and her one attempt to win tickets fails. While she’s walking around trying to figure out what to do next, Fujimoto crashes into her while delivering papers on his bike, and he just so happens to have a pair of tickets, which he reluctantly gives to Kobato after she agrees to help him deliver papers.

Kobato brings the tickets to Kohaku, but she says she has to refuse, since Shuichiro is so busy and she shouldn’t be so selfish. However, Kobato asks why it’s selfish to want to be with the person you love. Shuichiro over hears this and asks for the tickets. The next day, while Kobato is trying to spy on the date, Ioryogi spots Rabbit, a messenger from heaven, who tells him that Kobato only has 1 year to fill her bottle. Unfortunately, her actions with Kohaku didn’t add any candies to her bottle since she was already happy.

I had already wondered how long it would take Kobato to fill her bottle, given that each sealed heart is only represented by a small candy, but now the Rabbit messenger thing ups the ante by saying she only has a year to fill the bottle. This comes back to the question: is it possible that healing excessively broken hearts may field larger (or multiple) candies? If not, then Koboato is facing quite the uphill battle.

Meanwhile, we’re introduced to two characters from “heaven,” Kohaku and the Rabbit. Obviously Ioryogi appears to be from heaven as well, though I’m not completely sure about Kobato, since she doesn’t seem familiar with what Ioryogi is talking about. I’m sure we’ll expand on all that eventually as well.

And I guess this episode answered the question of helping out a heart that might be in pain does not necessarily equal healing a broken heart, as Kohaku, while obviously pained by missing Shuichiro, was still happy.

Section23 will distribute Hidamari Sketch, a 12 episode series that aired in 2007, on January 12, 2010.  It’s unclear whether Sentai has only licensed the first series or both aired series, but the release is explicitly labeled “Season 1,” suggesting that they have either licensed or are intending to license the 2nd season as well.

Section23 will distribute the first of two Glass Mask (Glass no Kamen) sets on January 19, 2010, which will include the first half of the 51 episode series which aired in in 2005 and 2006. The second set has not been scheduled yet.

Finally, Neo Angelique Abyss, a 13 episode series that aired in 2008, will be released January 26, 2010.  Once again, the release is labeled “Season 1,” suggesting that they may also picked up the 2nd season as well.

As is the case with all Sentai Filmworks titles, these are subtitle only releases.

Shana and Yuji sift through junk at Friagne’s old place looking for Hougu he’s stashed away when Yuji finds a telescope. He looks at Shana through it and the pair immediately switch bodies, and Alastor realizes that it is the Hougu “Reshuffle.” However, Satou and Tanaka, who were out buying ice cream, come back so Yuji-in-Shana’s-body has to throw as much junk in Shana’s cape as he can and hopes that Reshuffle is there for them to change back later, as Alaster impresses on both of them that no one can learn that they swapped.

The pair try to think of a place to sift through the junk. At first Yuji thinks of the party room of a Kareoke parlor, but find Margery drinking near by. He then thinks of the school, but the end up finding out that Yoshida and Ike are there to watch Ogata play a volleyball game. Worse, Shana-in-Yuji’s-body barges into their classroom while the volleyball team is in the middle of changing.

After finally escaping the school, they head to about the only option left: Yuji’s house, but run into Wilhelmina in town. Wilhelmina is immediately suspicious and sends one of her ribbons after Yuji’s body, but Shana blocks it out of instinct. This raises Wilhelmina’s suspicions even more, and Yuji is only able to get them out of it by yelling that he loves Wilhelmina, stunning her, and allowing the pair to escape.

The pair finally get to Yuji’s house, only to find Yuji’s mother there, who immediately suggests to Yuji-in-Shana’s-body that he should take a bath since Shana’s body is all sweaty, but Yuji is able to get out of this. However, once he reaches his room, he finds Shana doubled over and wonders if Reshuffle causes some sort of damage when used with a Flame Haze, so Yuji promptly dumps out everything that he stored in Shana’s cloak, making his room look like a disaster area.

Yuji’s mother, hearing the crash, arrives to see what happened, so Shana puts up a Fuzetsu, allowing Yuji to put all the junk back away and allowing Shana to grab Reshuffle, allowing them to switch bodies back. However, Yuji immediately finds that the problem Shana was having was that she ate so much ice cream that Yuji’s stomach was about to revolt, causing Yuji to sprint to the restroom.

Shana then asks Alastor why it was so imperative that no one find out that they switched bodies, so Alastor tells her that Reshuffle works only between two people who have no wall between their hearts.

I always kind of like body-switch episodes, and it works particularly well here with Shana, I think. They probably could have done even more with it, but most of the time was spent dodging everyone they knew rather than Yuji doing un-womanly things with Shana’s body (though there was some of that, such has him flashing Shana’s panties everywhere when climbing over the garbage at Friagne’s place).  Of course, this also let the writers to make Shana appear super-tsundre in this episode as well (and make Yuji look like a manly-man).

This OVA was created with the expressed reason of developing Shana and Yuji’s characters to set the series up for the third and presumably final season. Having that in mind, what did we learn here? First off, Yuji still has a lot of potential to develop his skills, as Shana was able to use his powers to their fullest extent. Second, we pretty much confirm, due to the nature of Reshuffle, that the two love each other, even if they aren’t willing to admit it to each other or themselves yet.

I’m not sure when this is supposed to take place, but my guess would be between the first and second seasons. Yuji has all his built up power of existence, so it is certainly after the first season, but Yuji supposedly “chose” Shana at the end of the second season, and it didn’t seem to me that their relationship was to that point here. Perhaps I’m wrong too, and we’ll find out more later, and we just didn’t see that sort of stuff due to the nature of the episode too.

I haven’t seen any schedule for when the next episode comes out, but there are supposed to be 4 episodes, and if we assume roughly the same amount of time between releases, and some time between the last OVA episode and a presumed season 3 in Fall 2010, we’re probably looking at something like 3 months between episodes, which would put episode 2 near the end of January, with the last two episodes in April and July (basically near the start of each anime season).

Episode Summary:

Sawako’s time at school is getting easier and easier it seems.  She gets greeted by her surrounding classmates, and even carries on conversations with them.  During one such conversation Sawako learns about how popular Kazehaya is with the girls and how in middle school there were so many girls vying for his attention that they decided to call him “Everybody’s Kazehaya.”  This just makes her vow to try harder.

A new homeroom teacher shows up, the baseball coach, and promptly tries to dispell any rumors by staring at Sawako for 10 seconds.  He then asks for roll call volunteers and Sawako once again accepts the job to try and save the class from trouble.  As before, Kazehaya also accepts, but this time other classmates respond as well which surprises Sawako.   After school, as Sawako starts the roll call book, Kazehaya shows up to help but only gets one name written down before he has to go to the teacher’s room.  After that, other classmates of Sawako’s appear in the doorway and actually want to talk to her and a nice conversation ensues.

The next day during class Kazehaya passes her a note asking to meet him and the puppy they found after school, which she gladly accepts.  On her way to drop off some papers later in the day, Sawako starts zoning out thinking about her future encounter and winds up dropping all the papers.  A girl, whom Sawako says looks like a French doll, helps her pick them up.

At the riverbank she meets Kazehaya and Maru-chan (the puppy) and they chat about studying.  Sawako confesses that she learns best by dreaming about how she would explain it to someone else.  The next day, Kazehaya does just that by asking Sawako to help him with homework.  The other sudents in the class catch on and realize that Sawako is a great teacher and she winds up helping everyone.  When they all finish, Sawako was so happy that she could help that she lets out a big smile, much to the surprise of the rest of the class.  Later, Kazehaya tells Sawako that he is selfish and wanted to keep that smile all to himself (awww…).

Finally, as Yona and Yoshida are leaving they hear girls talking about rumors about themselves.  Annoyed, they approach them to find out who spread the rumors, for which they answer “Sadako”.

Thoughts:

So it looks as though they are going to start the fracas next episode.  This episode calmly and slowly built on the progress that Sawako made in the previous episode.  Everything is still butterflies and rainbows so far, except for the last minute of the show.  It was good to see that people are starting to come around and treat Sawako like any other person.  Her interactions with peers is getting better and better, even to the point where people came to her to talk, instead of her just being there at the time.  Of course Sawako gives all the credit to Kazehaya for his actions putting her into those situations, which to a point is correct.  But Sawako is the one that is trying hard to win their favor as well.

The tutor aspect was a nice touch to bring everyone in together around Sawako.  Obviously, the crap is gonna hit the fan next week, and will most likely be the French Doll girl.  No one should really expect Sawako to be making rumors about people, and French Doll is the only real character that has been shown a few times.  Methinks she had something to do with it.  Aside from that, this was a nice soothing episode.  The art is still great (although the distorted chibi Sawako faces are getting annoying), but all in all not much to complain about.

What I usually don’t like about most fan service comedies is the male lead.  They usually are trying to adhere to some mythical ‘higher moral standard‘ that keeps them from acting on their impulses the way that (IMO) most other teenage males would.  For that reason you get the old: “Lala-san put some clothes on!  I don’t want to see that!”, or something similar.

Sora no Otoshimono is handling it differently, which I like.  When an oppai andriod angel falls from the sky and says that she can grant wishes, what does he do?  Wish for money and to be invisible so that he can watch/grope his hawt neighbor.  Perfect!  This is an animated fantasy, so dammit show me some fantasies.  It’s a funny and off the wall show that doesn’t seem like it’s really supposed to make much sense, but who cares?

The clinching moment for me came at the end of the second episode.  After all that pantsu nonsense the whole episode, the show has an ED of beautiful panoromic scenery with pantsu flying in a goose flock formation.  Absolute win.  Definitely going to watch this one to see what else pantsu can do that I didn’t know about.  I’m out!