TONIKAWA: Over The Moon For You

Episode 11

More slice-of-life content abounds as Chitose discovers that Nasa and Tsukasa's apartment has burned down and that they are living in the outbuilding at a local bathhouse. Eventually that leads to a party, which eventually leads to a video game tournament with a favor from a reluctant Nasa as the prize. In other words, just normal, everyday occurrences.

As is usual with this series, the fun is in the details. Chitose's gullibility is a prime source for humor in this episode, and honestly, it has yet to get old. (That the maids are fully aware of it, and take full advantage of it for their own amusement, only makes it funnier.) This also marks the first meeting of Chitose and Kaname, and Chitose has met her match there. Aya and Tsukasa also seem tailor-made to be rivals, though only on the video game front since Aya has already lost the romantic battle.

Aside from the humor and an occasional sweet moment here and there, this episode also comes down to a total geek-out on video game systems. Chitose rattles off a whole litany of them at one point, which break down as follows:

• Mega Drive – this is the outside-of-America name for the system known in America as the Sega Genesis. It debuted in 1988.
• Pippin refers to the Apple Bandai Pippin @WORLD (aka PiP P!N), an Apple Macintosh derivative produced in 1996 and 1997.
• Laser Active was a 4th generation home video game console, which could play Laserdiscs, CDs, console games, and LD-G karaoke. It was produced by Pioneer Corporation in 1993 and is considered a commercial failure.
• Pyuta refers to a 16-bit computer also known as the Tomy Tutor. It was produced in 1982 in Japan (and 1983 in the States, but did not compete well against the Commodore 64 there).
• SG-10000 – I have to wonder if this was a mistranslation or a copyright dodge, as this seems to be referring to the SG-1000, which was Sega's first entry into the home video game market in 1982.
• P/ECE refers to a greyscale mobile gaming platform released by visual novel publisher AQUAPLUS in 2001.

This all begs the question of how and why someone of Chitose's age has such arcane knowledge; perhaps she studied it specifically to entice Tsukasa? It's probably best to just treat this as part of the joke. This eventually leads to a mini-tournament held during the party using both Street Fighter V and the original Street Fighter, complete with actual in-game action and a copyright load-up notice for the latter. I'm going to have to take some issue with Tsukasa's statement “the history of fighting games can be said to be the history of Street Fighter” during this event, however. While 1987's Street Fighter and especially 1991's Street Fighter II shaped and defined genre standards, 1984's Karate Champ is widely-credited with popularizing one-on-one martial arts games and serving as the template for the Street Fighter franchise.

The other thing that is somewhat of a joke here is the Tako Pa – aka “takoyaki party” – that everyone gets involved in. It is portrayed (perhaps a bit snidely) as something the “cool kids” do, and it does in fact appear to be an actual thing in the Kansai region of Japan. The one seeming cultural reference that I could not place – or even tell if it was a reference – was what YouTuber, if any, Aya was supposed to be parodying around the 15:54 mark.

As entertaining as this episode was, the one concern is that this is the next-to-last episode and no hint has yet been provided about how the series will wrap up. It is currently giving the impression that it is just going to end without getting into any bigger revelations about Tsukasa. Guess we'll see next episode if it can wrap up properly.

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TONIKAWA: Over The Moon For You is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.