Tasokare Hotel

Episode 7

Tasokare Hotel seems to be hitting its stride. It's not winning any track and field events, but if it keeps going at this pace, it could lock in a respectable 10k time. That is to say, this week's episode is pretty decent. By once again tying the guest of the week to a member of the hotel staff, the narrative teases out a mostly satisfying arc for each character. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it plays to the series' strengths of tried and true character beats with a mild twist.

Ruri and her strained relationship with her mother are the focal points of this story. Astute watchers (or readers of my previous review) will recall that her dialogue last week hinted at trouble with her parents, so Tasokare Hotel is demonstrably competent enough to handle foreshadowing. This episode clarifies other information about Ruri, too. Of the humans, she's been working at the hotel the longest. She's in a vegetative state in the real world, and the truck that hit her is currently planted through one of her walls. The morbid little details unique to each room are arguably the best parts of this setting.

The most curious thing Ruri says is that she's getting paid in “time” to work at the hotel. Neko doesn't get the chance to press her on what she means, so the audience is left to think about it. She may be talking about a supernatural “salary” where time spent in the hotel buys her more of a lifetime when she gets back, or maybe it guarantees her a better spot in the afterlife. However, that would go against the apparent spirit of the hotel—people are meant to check out, and stragglers like Ruri, Neko, and the rest are exceptions.

I believe Ruri means it in the sense that the time she spends in the hotel is its own reward. Based on her memories and attitude, she doesn't hold a fondness for reality. While she speaks affectionately about her dad, she curses her mother, avoids children her age, and admits that her family is poor and mired in debt. It doesn't sound like she's in any hurry to return to that, especially when she has a job, acquaintances, and purpose in the hotel. We know people can't stay there forever which means Ruri knows that as well, and I expect a future episode to deal with the drama of that inevitable confrontation. That run-in with transience will hit even harder now that Ruri has openly accepted Neko and Atori's friendship.

This episode's ambitions are more grounded, and that's where our guest comes in. Atori had jazz hangups, so he got a jazz sage to guide him. Ruri has mommy issues, so she gets a mom. Akari exhibits a lot of obvious parallels with Ruri's mom—they both have connections to the criminal underworld, they both have a daughter, they're both divorced, and they both make mistakes. Akari's daughter even has a ponytail that resembles Ruri's. On Ruri's end, it's also clear that she thinks about her mom a lot. When she checked into the hotel, she had a carousel head referencing the last time she saw her, and she remembered her name thanks to the tiara bought by her mom. When Akari and Ruri use each other as surrogates for the family they left behind, Tasokare Hotel paints an affecting tableau.

If that were all the episode accomplished, it would be a feel-good story akin to Atori's from last week. However, to its credit, Tasokare Hotel mixes it up this week by making Akari a more complicated figure. She's not a good person. Her love for her daughter is genuine, but she uses that love to justify robbing the elderly. She also displays an avoidant personality to a fault. When she first checks in, she rushes to the bar instead of searching for clues about her identity. This is consistent with her attitude about her part in the telemarketing scam, where she pretends not to know what she was doing until it gets thrown into her face by her daughter. She explains it to the staff by stating, “At first, I thought it was just a decent, well-paying job,” but that's a bald-faced lie. Considering the guy she worked with and the calls she made, she had to have known. She was just able to contort her moral compass by thinking about her daughter.

Akari receives karmic retribution by dying in her attempt to escape justice. But in her hotel room, when she realizes the extent of what she's done and what she's lost, she breaks down and apologizes. While her daughter may ultimately be better off with her ex, Akari wasn't a bad mom, and she found her conscience in the end. This is significant for Ruri, who now realizes that her mom is probably a similarly complicated person. It doesn't excuse her mom from abandoning her and burdening her dad with debt, but it means those happy memories with her mom weren't a lie either. And that lets Ruri open up a little bit more to Neko and Atori. It's a sappy conclusion, but Tasokare Hotel's earlier bite makes that sweetness more pleasantly mild. This is the bittersweet emotional register I want to keep seeing from this show.

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Steve is on Bluesky now. He can check out of social media any time, but he can never leave. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.