Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-San – Episode 12 – [Series finaleReview/Recap]

By: v.o.lynnYuu, lost in Nagoya, calls Jun distraught and confused. And that’s just the beginning. Welcome to the season finale, with a hint at it being the series finale as well.

(SPOILERS AND SPOILERS AND SPOILERS)

Part 1 – Nagoya

Yuu’s hair-trigger Koizumi-san radar goes off while she is on a train headed from Osaka back to Tokyo. Leaving her sleeping cousin and brother behind on the train, she leaps off at ta stop in Nagoya, certain that she saw the Ramen maiden somewhere. Armed with about the equivalent of fifty cents, she’s stuck until her family wakes up and checks their phone. After a fruitless search for Koizumi, Yuu stops at a fast-food style ramen place with value-priced meals. Cashing in her only money, she sits down and is greeted with her first spork!Confused by the tool, she can’t decide if she’s supposed to eat with the spork or chopsticks, or both, but then a familiar sound: Koizumi’s mild suggestion that she choose whichever one she likes the most. By coincidence she, too, decided to eat at the restaurant as it’s considered a bit of a tourist destination.Much like Yuu was lured off the train by a sudden appearance of Koizumi-san, Koizumi switched her route home from Tokyo to stop in Nagoya for a ramen made by a Taiwanese chef that is a local specialty.Koizumi takes Yuu to a different ramen shop with Betocon (she calls it “a Ramen to give one stamina”) ramen before heading to the train station for the next bullet train to Tokyo.Yuu shares her love-confession ("Like" confession? Friendship-fession? It's not 100% clear, but it's pretty much a declaration of love) with Koizumi, but gets her answer in the form of the best mixed message she could hope for, apparently. Koizumi turns her down. Instead of in person, Koizumi pops her response as a text message, in effect giving Yuu her contact information.

Part 2 – Reunion

For the season (series?) finale ender, we get a bit of a time skip. Koizumi pinged Yuu her texting info, but they haven’t seemed to communicate much more than previously in part 2. It’s been a few weeks, and Koizumi’s caught a cold. Then, another two weeks with Koizumi home sick, refusing text messages and barely keeping herself together in the meantime. Her arrival at school is greeted with much relief from Yuu, but being sick held her back from her one true love - Ramen.In an apparent bittersweet moment, Yuu seems to have matured and lets Koizumi go get Ramen on her own - no pushing or prodding. (It doesn't last.)

A few thoughts on the end of the series –

It does have a lovely soundtrack, it really does have a lot of interesting tips on ramen, ramen history, and ramen cooking. The information is really sandwiched between a lot of slice of life that feels a little like “endless eight” sometimes: “Has Yuu been to Koizumi at this shop before? Did she stalk her again? Has Koizumi met this character before? At the end of the series, or season, you want to feel fulfilled, but the story never makes it past Koizumi’s comfort in her favorite food, or past Yuu’s desire to be at her side at all times. You want it to. You feel like it might. But it never... quite... gets... there.Frustratingly, the episodes without Yuu and Koizumi together usually feel like the strongest in the series. In these, Koizumi is doing what she likes to do, and Yuu isn’t completely tied up in another person’s story. Yuu really does have a life outside of Koizumi (during the start of the series, anyway). But then there’s the episode with the “Koizumi journal” and my brain can’t even wrap itself around the two of them together.If you’re looking for a cooking show binge after this, go watch Restaurant to Another World – it has all of the sparkly-eyed happy eating people with more description and less stalking. (More nakedness, though.) Koizumi-san is tame, it’s sweet, it’s subtle, and while it’s not without its drawbacks (including a lackluster ending, despite part 1 of this episode).If you asked me “should I watch Ramen while eating this show”, I would say yes. Gosh darnit, yes. And after. And dress up your own ramen with things that you think would taste good, too. And experiment. And be inspired.Because that’s a lot of what Koizumi-san’s love for ramen typifies: although there is a sense of her just enjoying a meal, there’s also a soft underlying tone of adventure.