A day that involves some tweeting is a day well spent for Penguin.

——

Talk about a fillertastic episode. In the first half, Panda, jealous of Masaki’s apprenticeship with Mr. Tree Kangaroo, yearned to also be someone’s apprentice. His plan: be the apprentice of the first person/animal who walked through the door of Polar Bear’s Cafe. Well, at least that seemed like the plan when he became Anteater’s apprentice. But after quitting his apprenticeship with said Anteater, his standards changed after seeing Llama and Handa walk through the door and after shooting down poor Shirokuma as a master. “I don’t want to learn or train for something. I just want to lazily be an apprentice,” Panda shamelessly explains. That led to Shirokuma introducing Panda to the master and of all masters when it came to lazying around, and led to a transcendent experience Panda never imagined.

The second half focused on Sports Day, which apparently is a yearly marathon event that involves races of all kinds: normal, three-legged, hurdles, etc. Sasako was forced to host the event, and mostly every animal who’s ever made an appearance on the show participated in it. It culminated in an epic “three-legged” race between Shirokuma and Grizzly… and their partners.

With the show coming to a close, episode 24 seemed design to cram as many characters as it could to maximize their airtime. That’s fine, particularly if the plan is to wrap up the series by concluding the Handa x Sasako narrative and giving more of the burn to the three main characters. There weren’t that many good gags, but it was fun seeing so many of this season’s characters in one episode.

GO Rating: 3/5

Will never get tired of ‘Shirokuma stabs Penguin’ gags. Never ever.