In the first episode of Hanasaku Iroha, Ohana moves from the city to her grandma’s hot springs hotel in the country after her mother flees their home.

This show is looking quite promising. I thought that going to live in the hot spring hotel would be a happy experience, and she would make friends and have lots of fun and this would be another show about cute girls doing cute things. Boy was I wrong. Her grandmother is harsh and forces her to work, and the employees there are not nice either, especially her roommate Minko who hates her.  In short she’s absolutely miserable. This seems like it may be a show that will actually have some bite (although I don’t doubt that she will eventually grow to get along with everyone). But don’t get friendly, get even. I really want to see Ohana stick it to her grandmother and Minko now.

The confession scene was one of the better ones I’ve seen as well— having it on the slide in the playground and making Ohana fall down at the end was a nice touch. You could see his desperation and Ohana’s confusion well, and it didn’t seem forced like most of those scenes do.

My main concern is that in the first half of this episode, Ohana’s monologues were walking the thin line between intelligence and pretentiousness. This disappeared in the second half once she got to work though, so it’s hard to tell how much of an issue this will be in the rest of show. I’m considering blogging this, depending on what else is on Sunday and how the next episode goes.