When a PC Tune-Up Sounds Like a Funeral
The third episode of Ichijouma Mankitsu Gurashi is, frankly, a glorious mess. Not in the sense of poor construction—the writers clearly know exactly what they’re doing—but in the way it throws four different sitcom crises at the screen simultaneously and somehow makes them all sing. We get Neo accidentally chanting sutras while doing PC maintenance, Meiko discovering her talent for zombie massacre (and chuunibyou war cries), Marika battling her family’s ikebana expectations with the power of video editing, and a brand-new rival from the cat café downstairs who has made a catastrophic species-level mistake. It’s the kind of episode where you sit back, stop asking questions, and just let the dorm chaos wash over you.
The Cold Open That Nearly Cleared the Café—Again
The episode opens in media res (or, more accurately, in media panic) with a customer trying to flee because they heard “something that sounded like a sutra chant.” Meiko, ever the country girl who apparently knows a spiritual emergency when she hears one, immediately grabs salt and starts purifying the premises. It’s the exact kind of overreaction we’ve come to expect from her—less panic, more “right, here we go again”—and it sets the episode’s tone beautifully. The culprit? Neo, deep in PC maintenance, narrating her internal monologue about thermal paste and voltage in a low, rhythmic drone. “I put too much spirit into it,” she explains, completely unaware that she’s just conducted a tech exorcism. The sequence is under two minutes but priceless, especially when a panicked Meiko tries to “begone, evil spirit” Neo herself and Neo deadpans, “I told you, I’m not possessed!” The gag comes back around later when Meiko, in the middle of a zombie game, carefully corrects her own language from “kill” to “laying them to rest”—which only makes her sound even more like a wandering monk. Customers flee again. The café’s financial recovery is built on a knife’s edge, and these two are out here performing accidental funerals.
Neo’s Troubleshooting Becomes a Demon Outbreak
The transition from exorcism to gaming is seamless. Neo, ever the technician, is bothered by desync in some multiplayer footage. She needs a test partner, and Marika—who apparently can’t handle zombie media—immediately abandons Meiko with the flimsiest excuse. What follows is a delightfully unhinged co-op session. Meiko, who claims she’s “not really good with these sorts of things,” turns out to have surprising reflexes. Neo, meanwhile, equips a “Kyun Kyun Fire” costume that is, to put it mildly, highly revealing—and then states it’s “three times harder than the previous one.” The visual of tiny Neo in some kind of magical-girl-meets-bikini-armor while Meiko shouts “I’ll brutally kill every last one of them!” and then apologises, only to correct herself to something even scarier, is the kind of layered comedy that rewards multiple watches.
The episode doesn’t just use the game as a quick laugh; it becomes a small character moment between the two. After a high score, Meiko mutters about mixed feelings but follows it up with the bizarrely tender declaration: “Neo-chan is like two sides of the same coin, an angel and a demon… And I love both!” It’s weird, it’s sweet, and it underlines how much Meiko’s big-sister energy has softened Neo’s spiky exterior.
Shubababa and the Birth of a Chunibyou Sensei
The gaming doesn’t stop there. Later, Meiko and Neo dive into another title—one that apparently involves thunderblades and explosions—and Meiko fully commits to chanting “Explosive! Gale! Thunderblade! Shubabababa!” with the fervour of an eighth-grader who just discovered dark power. Marika catches her in the act and immediately labels it chuunibyou, then follows up with the show’s most dangerous running joke: “As expected of a manga artist sensei!”
Meiko’s flustered “You’ve got it wrong!” is a perfect reminder that the central misunderstanding of the series is always lurking, ready to twist every quirk of her personality into “proof” of her fake identity. It’s also a neat meta-gag: Meiko isn’t a real mangaka, but she does have the kind of overly dramatic imagination that might produce one. For a girl from Akita who was humbled by instant miso soup, there’s a whole chunibyou world inside her waiting to come out.
Marika’s 45-Degree Heiress Crisis
While Neo and Meiko are bonding over bloodshed, Marika is having her own existential threat delivered via family text. At first, we’re led to think she’s in debt—she says “This is bad… Whoa, it’s morning?! I messed up…” and Meiko sees a message about “debt.” It’s quickly cleared up: the “debt” is actually a request for an ikebana progress report, and Marika’s family, the heads of the Suzuki School of Ikebana, want proof she’s not wasting her time streaming. If she fails, she’ll be dragged back home.
The comedy of Marika trying to arrange flowers in a PC room that’s “a bit dry” (the flower visibly wilts) is gold.
Her solution—film a lot and edit the hell out of it—is both modern and deeply relatable. With Meiko and Neo’s help, they capture angles and movements that make her look serene and masterful, then add sparkly effects in post. The result is a “masterpiece” that has the three of them celebrating on the tatami, Marika rolling around in triumph—panties on display, because of course.
Unfortunately, the MyuTube upload that follows catches a different kind of attention. A gossip blog notes a “streamer flashes panties,” but dismisses it as old news. The real problem? Her family’s crest is faintly visible on the embroidery of those panties. The episode pays this off with a single, brutal telegram: “Don’t expose your panties. Family meeting.” Marika’s face in that moment has to be seen to be believed. It’s the funniest consequence imaginable—she’s being hauled before the ikebana elders not because her arrangement was fake, but because her underwear was too identifiable. Classic Marika.
The Cat Café Avenger Who Came for Blood and Stayed for Manga
Just when you think the episode might wrap up, a new character storms in: Narumi Michika, owner of the cat café one floor down. She is furious, convinced that Manga Café Hedgehog is a direct competitor in the small-animal-café industry. The reason? The hedgehog mascot logo. “You’re awfully cocky for a hedgehog café!” she shouts, while the entire staff stares at her in bewilderment. The misunderstanding is so pure—especially when Rie gently points out “We’re a manga café, though”—that you can’t even blame her. She’s just a passionate cat person who saw a mammal logo and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
What makes the segment work beyond the initial joke is how quickly she’s disarmed. Meiko offers her miso soup; she cries (actual tears) and admits everyone makes mistakes. She then invites them down to the real cat café, where Meiko’s country upbringing with animals shines. The café itself is small but lovingly kept, and the detail about adopting out cats to trustworthy customers is a genuinely heartwarming touch.
Michika’s tsundere arc over the rest of the episode is a little mirror of the show itself. She claims she’s only visiting the manga café “to know the enemy,” then gets lost in a cat-themed travel manga for hours. By closing time, she’s the one screaming “No! Just five more minutes!” while the staff look on with knowing smiles. It’s the same way the series treats its audiences: you come for the conflict, you stay for the comfort and the very specific niche manga.
Where This Leaves the Dorm (and the Café)
This episode doesn’t move the overarching debt plot forward, but it quietly builds out the world and the internal pressures on the characters. Marika now has an active family threat hanging over her head—a potential recall that could tear her away from the café and her channel. Neo’s bond with Meiko is stronger than ever, cemented through shared gaming and odd compliments. Meiko herself continues to be the emotional anchor, her country practicality and unexpected passions (zombies, thunderblades) making her the heart of every scene she’s in. And with Michika introduced, there’s now a whole adjacent business that might pop up whenever the show needs a fresh source of absurd rivalry or unexpected friendship.
What struck me most on this rewatch is how comfortable the series feels by episode three. The humour relies on established character beats—Neo’s technical obsession, Meiko’s rapid escalation, Marika’s perpetual lack of pants—but uses them in new configurations that feel fresh rather than repetitive. A PC tune-up becomes an exorcism; an ikebana deadline becomes a crash course in video editing; a neighbour’s rage becomes a cat café field trip. Ichijouma Mankitsu Gurashi knows its characters well enough to let them be their weirdest selves and trust the audience will follow along.
One Last Thought
There’s a moment near the end, after all the chaos, where Meiko watches Michika absorbed in a manga and says quietly, almost to herself, “That’s so nice.” It’s a throwaway line, but it captures the ethos of the show. For all the debt, misunderstandings, and supernatural-sounding PC maintenance, this is a place where people find something they didn’t know they needed. Sometimes it’s a zombie game; sometimes it’s a cat ramen travelogue. Sometimes it’s just the sound of a girl from Akita shouting “Shubababa!” in a manga café after midnight. I’m here for all of it.
Screenshots
← Episode 2 | All Ichijouma Mankitsu Gurashi Season 1 posts →
