Just as I’m about to reach breaking point, the scene comes to an end and Gary arrives back home. I would ordinarily use this time to start a ten-minute rant about how that entire sojourn into the TV world didn’t accomplish anything and was a complete and utter waste of my time, but I’m just so relieved that this seemingly endless string of cutscenes is coming to an end that I’m going to let it go. Plus, the comedy glasses were actually kind of amusing.

Fade in on the Dojimas’ living room. Holy shit, Hot Uncle is home for the second evening in a row. Is someone recording this? Even more astonishingly, he tells Gary and Nanako that he’ll be able to take the 4th and 5th of May off work. Nanako understandably reacts like someone just told her that she and her dad are going for a week’s vacation at Walmart: excitement segueing into doubt. She points out that her dad’s leave is always cancelled, to which he feebly protests, “Not every year…” Wow, my sympathy for this poor child knows no bounds. “I know you wanted to go to [Walmart], but…I wouldn’t mind going a little further out of the neighbourhood,” Hot Uncle says. What, you don’t want to risk bumping into Adachi while you’re out with the family? That would be kind of awkward.

Hot Uncle promises to take Nanako on a trip during his time off, and Gary’s guilt-tripped into going along too, even though he has a million things he’d rather be doing with his time. The icing on this vast disappointment cake of a day is Gary being nominated to organize the family’s packed lunches for the trip. Hot Uncle clearly didn’t hear about the fiasco that was his nephew’s last attempt at food preparation, but far be it from Gary to turn down a request. I just hope someone packs some Loperamide.

The next day is Sunday, so at least Gary doesn’t have to encounter any of his mentally-challenged teachers or on-off love interests. Chie calls and asks him if he’d like to spend his blessed, precious Sunday training against Shadows in the TV world. Yeah, no thanks, but you and Yukiko go right ahead. Gary would only cramp your style anyway.

This is actually totally innocent, but Gary isn’t doing much to disprove the ‘picking up strange men in parks’ stereotype.

For no reason in particular, Gary chooses to take a walk down by the Samegawa Flood Plain, where he encounters an elderly fisherman. The kindly old piscator gives Gary a fishing rod, along with some helpful pointers he instantly forgets, but this isn’t his most important encounter on the riverbank; a few feet away, he notices a forlorn-looking man sitting on a tree stump. Gary’s instant reaction is to wonder if this unidentified man could be a potential Social Link, because he’s well and truly been bitten by the collecting bug and is now sniffing those things out like a game designer looking for crack rocks. Imagine his surprise when this distinctly average-looking man turns out to be the one and only Taro Namatame, otherwise known as Misuzu Hiiragi’s errant husband and Mayumi Yamano’s lover. Gary knows he shouldn’t think ill of the dead, but he has to question Mayumi’s taste in men; with his swept-back hair, gaunt features and haunted expression, this guy looks like a vampire with an office job. His dialogue isn’t any more scintillating than his appearance, because he just mutters to himself about something being “too horrible”. Gary backs away slowly, not exactly eager to form the Disturbed Creeper Social Link, and heads straight to the Walmart Food Court. Sure, he told himself he was having a day off from all this shit, but he feels it’s important to let the others know who he’s just encountered. It’s not every day one of the Inaba Scooby Gang bumps into a possible murder suspect, after all.

On the way to Walmart, he runs into a random NPC who asks him to procure a rare sake known as the Mori Ranmaru. For reasons beyond my understanding, Gary doesn’t reply, “Uh, the shopping district is that way, dickhead”, but agrees to help him. A mysterious higher power tells him the Mori Ranmaru was once sold by the Konishi family, but since their store has been closed since Taylor’s death, gaining entry won’t be easy. But Gary’s determined to find a way–the happiness of this random wanker he’s never met before depends on it!

A quick phone call later, Chie, Yosuke, and Yukiko are assembled at their usual table. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they don’t seem at all interested in Gary’s brief encounter with Namatame, instead choosing to nag him about going back inside the TV. To shut them all up, he relents, and they’re soon hobnobbing with Teddie yet again. As soon as he sees them, he starts babbling about a “powerful Shadow” he can sense inside Yukiko’s Castle. Gary thought he was done with that place, but adds this to his novel-length Shit I Have To Do list.

He valiantly leads the others inside the castle, but soon changes his mind–he isn’t prepared for a gruelling battle at all. He hasn’t even exfoliated today! Turning to leave, he runs headfirst into a random Shadow, which the party defeats without even breaking a sweat. Suddenly having a brainwave, he next heads to the Twisted Shopping District, whose own version of Konishi Liquors is still open. Inside, he finds a bottle of the sake his new best friend at the riverbank asked him to locate. Score! That’s as much work as he plans to do today, so he drags the others back through the TV, ignoring their protests. He’ll never understand why these guys seem to like spending time in the TV world so much, but he’s sure they’ll have another victim to rescue soon enough. Ah, the life of a teenager in the Japanese countryside.

I’m going to use this excuse on myself the next time I’m suffering from a bout of procrastination.

Once back in the comfort of his bedroom, he remembers he has exams coming up soon, and figures he ought to cram in a little studying. But the familiar spanner in the works known as the Invisible Narrator once again tells Gary how he’s supposed to be feeling–apparently, his expedition inside the TV has left him too exhausted to study. Yes, that ten-second Shadow encounter and the two minutes spent rummaging through the crates in the deserted Konishi Liquors store were truly a test of his fitness and endurance. I’m amazed he managed to make it back at all.

After school the next day, Gary’s stopped in the corridor by a shady student. No, that’s actually his name. This creepy little guy wants to talk to Gary on behalf of a certain student society, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that this organization isn’t the Chess Club. No, we’re talking the Occult Club, and Tom Riddle here tells Gary that he and his fellow members are looking for a DARK ornament to brighten up (darken up?) their club’s room. Like 99% of the other pieces of junk Gary must retrieve for errands such as this, this statue can be found in the TV world–in “an old castle”, to be more precise. Hmm, I wonder what this clue could be referring to. Gary’s going to have his work cut out for him trying to track down this DARK AND EDGY statue in the myriad old castles he’s explored on his travels thus far. I hope the members of the Occult Club Slytherin House have patience to spare.

The line that sparked a thousand Persona/Harry Potter crossover fanfics.

On the way home, Gary drops by the Meat Dimension to gorge himself silly on more Chinese food while the IN hovers around his head, wittering that a moment on the lips equals a lifetime on the hips. Probably. He trundles home just in time to catch the end of the evening news broadcast, which today concerns a stolen van. Gripping! Luckily, the phone rings before Gary and Nanako combust with all the excitement. It’s Hot Uncle, and–you might want to make sure you’re sitting down for this–he reveals that he can’t take any time off for the family vacation after all. Poor Nanako excuses herself to go cry in private, leaving Gary to listen to the bullshit excuses his uncle’s reeling off down the phone. Allegedly, one of “the younger guys” at the station got sick, and Hot Uncle has to deal with his caseload until he recovers. Come on, Dojima, that’s almost as bad as “my dog ate my homework”. Even Nanako’s going to know the kind of load you’ll really be concerning yourself with. Just before hanging up, he has the gall to ask Gary to comfort Nanako in his place. Too annoyed to do anything but agree, Gary practically slams the phone back into its dock and takes a few moments to work out what the hell he’s going to say to his clearly upset cousin. “Study…?” the IN innocently suggests, making Gary want to slap him silly because studying is exactly what he was trying to do last night, except that he couldn’t because apparently even setting foot inside the TV wipes him out to the extent that he has to go straight to bed when he arrives home, so SHUT THE FUCK UP, INVISIBLE NARRATOR.

‘So THAT’s what ‘indurate’ means!’

It emerges that Nanako went straight to bed after her dad’s phone call, so Gary does some breathing exercises and then cracks on with studying for the midterms, resolving to give her the pep talk in the morning. When dawn breaks, though, he awakens to the sound of someone entering the house. Suspecting it’s just his uncle back from his latest hot, sweaty overtime session at the motel, Gary heads to the hall to investigate, only to find Chie, of all people, standing there as bold as brass. Yeah, this is worrying. Gary likes Chie and all, but suddenly appearing in his hall like a fucking ninja is a little too familiar for his liking. “Hey, if you’re free today, wanna go somewhere?” she chirps, and then unnecessarily adds, “Yukiko’s coming, too.” Girl, for the last time, Gary does not need to hear about your sex li…oh, wait, I get it now. Carry on.

Feeling sorry for Nanako, Gary and Chie invite her along too, and she jumps at the chance to hang out with the cool older kids for a while. D’aww. Her excitement reaches boiling point when they actually arrive at their destination…the Walmart Food Court, of course. To Nanako, this is like a surprise trip to Disneyland, and she sits enraptured as the Scooby Gang spout more of their usual waffle. Yosuke wonders why the fuck Gary would bring his little cousin to a dump like this, and as Gary gives him the stink-eye across the table, Nanako squeals that she loooooves Walmart. Even Yosuke, whose dad owns the damn place, is taken aback by her enthusiasm. She lets slip that this is probably the closest thing to a vacation she’s going to get now that her dad had to cancel his leave, causing the others to make sympathetic noises in response. Gary hopes he can let them handle all the touchy-feely shit, because he doesn’t have a clue what to say to comfort the girl. When Chie hears that Gary had been assigned to prepare the boxed lunches for the trip, she teases him for a bit, and then Yosuke thinks aloud that it’s not such a shock Gary can cook, since he’s so good with his hands. I am not fucking kidding. Look over there if you don’t believe me.

Yeah, totally straight. La la la laaa! *shoves fingers in ears*

Unbelievably, Chie demonstrates some tact and pretends she didn’t hear Yosuke basically outing his and Gary’s relationship, while the remark seemed to go over Yukiko’s and Nanako’s heads altogether. Gary, meanwhile, is mired down in inner turmoil once again. Yosuke didn’t like the taste of his meat…but just said he’s good with his hands! Why does this have to be so complicated? Can’t Yosuke just give him a straight answer and put him out of his misery!? Now he isn’t even sure how he should feel again. Oh, how he longs for the days when his biggest worry in life was trying to co-ordinate his pencil case to match his outfit.

Chie doesn’t want to be excluded from praise, and claims she’s a good cook too. In fact, she’s willing to whip up some boxed lunches if the guys want her to. She is, I imagine, discreetly consulting her 50 Ways with Steak app while saying all this. “Uhh, lemme think about-No,” Yosuke bitches. The easily-angered Chie gives him the reaction he wanted, flailing wildly from across the table as she challenges him to a cook-off. Sadly, this doesn’t lead to a Suikoden II style minigame, which, now I come to think of it, is probably a good thing–Gary’s as adventurous as the next guy when it comes to trying new recipes, but even he draws the line at mayonnaise cheesecake.

So, Iron Chef Inaba is on–and, to make things even more interesting, it’s something of a battle of the sexes, too. Gary still isn’t itching to get into the kitchen, but if he’s teaming with Yosuke at least he’ll have a nice view whenever he bends down to put something in the oven. He starts to experience a vivid fantasy in which Yosuke sweeps all the cooking utensils off the kitchen counter and throws him on top of it, but stops himself before he gets carried away. There’s a time and a place for such thoughts, and besides, he still isn’t sure where he and Yosuke stand. Best to avoid fantasizing while he’s so emotionally confused.

I don’t think the game has broached the subject of Nanako’s mother yet, so it falls to Yosuke to do it–which goes as well as you’d expect. “I bet we’ll make something that ranks up there with your mom’s cooking, Nanako-chan!” he winks. An awkward silence descends upon the food court. “I don’t have a mom. She died in an accident,” Nanako eventually replies. Yosuke turns redder than a maiden’s blush as Chie and Yukiko glare at him for this massive faux-pas, even though they didn’t know about it either. Really, as much of a dickhead as Yosuke can be, I have to place some of the blame on Gary for not mentioning this tiny detail to him. I mean, it’s the kind of thing that probably would have come up in conversation by now. Nanako tells him not to feel bad for his foot-in-mouth moment–her mom may be gone, but she still has her dad around. Never mind the fact that she’d probably see more of the guy if he were in prison.