YuruYuri (Season 3) Episode 4.
It's an episode about sleepovers, so that's a pretty good start. I did wonder if they were deliberately messing with my expectations in this episode, maybe it's their way of trying not to be too predictable.
At the start of the episode with Yui, Kyoko, Ayano and Chitose staying over at Yui's place, Chitose suggests that they bathe two at a time. I almost feel bad for assuming that Chitose had perverted thoughts on her mind, it seemed like a perfect setup to get Kyoko and Ayano bathing together. I suppose there's a good chance Chitose wouldn't have survived that so maybe it's for the best that things didn't go that way. It's interesting though, in the first season that almost certainly would have been the plan but they do seem to do things differently now. It turned out to be a pretty nice opportunity for some friendly bonding and I suppose it actually was nice to highlight that there's more to Chitose than nosebleeds.
The first years were also having a sleepover, which seemed like a fun time. Again, I was expecting some sort of argument or misunderstanding between Sakurako and Himawari but things didn't go quite the way I had expected. It's also interesting to see the way that Akari's character has developed. She can be kind of oblivious about things to do with her and she can often be clumsy but at the same time she can be surprisingly perceptive about others and quite intelligent at times. Little touches, like the way she tries to get a reaction out of Chinatsu, add a bit more to the characters. It is also nice to see Akari treated as more than a joke.
The sleepover with Akane and Tomoko was also interesting. Akane's story about Akari was quite a nice little moment and, while the other things we know about Akane might have twisted it somewhat, the show doesn't feel it necessary to go into that. It's hard to say what that is really supposed to mean, maybe it's acknowledging that there's more to the way Akane feels about Akari than just her fantasies (I'd like to think so, anyway). It was quite a good segment all in all (and the yuri here somewhat made up for having less elsewhere).
It was a little strange that the episode had an extra little scene tacked on at the end, it felt somehow detached from the rest of the episode. It was a pretty good scene really but it kind of seemed like the episode had run a bit longer than expected so they needed to do something else unrelated to what had gone before. Maybe there was some sort of relevance that I'd missed or maybe it being unrelated was deliberate for some reason.
It was a pretty good episde overall, I do like this show more as what it has become than what it was originally. It has been interesting to see it change over time as well.