English Dub Review: The Quintessential Quintuplets “Good Work Today”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The new calendar year starts as the quintuplets discuss what they’re going to do to pay Futaro now that they can’t quite pay him with money while they’re living on their own. While Ichika is barely making enough to pay rent, the others pitch part time jobs they can take, though Futaro wants them to focus on studying for now. While on his own part time job, Ichika comes in with a crew to shoot a scene for a movie. It’s not a role she would normally take, but she’s taking all she can get at the moment. Still, Futaro praises her for working hard, which she hides her liking of, as she’s still rooting for Miku despite her own feelings starting to bubble to the surface. Later, Itsuki and Yotsuba talk to their father, Maruo, and they strike a deal: If they pass their final exams, Futaro will be rehired, but if they fail, they’ll be transferred to a different school.

OUR TAKE
This episode is really just the valley between the major developments of the last arc and the ones to come in the next few weeks, which will shift things quite a bit. We finally get to meet the father of the quintuplets, who is about as imposing and intimidating as the unapproving father character in a romance story can get who Futaro will have to overcome, namely in his faith in the sisters to grow as students versus Maruo’s lack of faith in them for whatever reason. And while I didn’t bring up Nino and Miku in the Overview, this episode is really about showing how all of the sisters are slowly moving forward in their own character arcs. Miku is the only one who is out and proud about working towards getting Futaro to like her at the moment, but both Ichika and Nino are slowly finding it difficult to deny how they both feel. This isn’t much of a spoiler (not that anyone reading this is not going to know how things turn out by now), but it is interesting to see these two in such a state of flux shortly before the match hits the powder keg.

Yotsuba doesn’t get a whole lot to contribute to this week, which is a shame compared to how she kinda wound up being the focus near the end last time, but her part in developments to come will be apparent soon. Itsuki, meanwhile, seems to be the spearhead of opposition against their father and his (likely well meaning) plans for them. Out of the five, she is the one who is more invested in the education side of things, as well as believing in Futaro’s tutoring and how much he pushes all of the sisters to be better individuals instead of just five parts of a single person like they used to be. However their father sees them, he seems to either not be aware of this concern or possibly seems to just not care as long as they are under his watch. There are reasons for this that will be elaborated on later in the story, but that seems to be main point of growing conflict between him and Futaro, who even went out of his way to rant about Maruo not being aware of Nino and Itsuki’s fight. But things are going to really start sparking up next time, as the love hexagon begins to take shape.