I know I could have looked it up anytime. But as I speculated last week, Suntory is on the production committee for Bartender. Which is fine, you know, but I have to say the ham-handedness of it is starting to grate on me. I certainly don’t remember heavy product placement in the first anime (which I admit I didn’t watch all that much of). There are times in this series where it straddles the line between entertainment and commercial. And that seems to be getting worse as it progresses. I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t concern me.
I’m also struggling with the fact that Bartender seems to be trying a little too hard to tell conventional stories. There was a certain kind of zen abstraction to the first few episodes that in my hazy memory is more what I associate with the franchise. That works better for me, though some of these conventional stories are interesting enough. A lot of them don’t really involve Sasakura that much too, which strikes me as rather odd.
This time around the focus is squarely on the SUNTORY Cocktail Awards. The title character is looped into this by Kurushima-san asking him to observe the finals and tell him which contestant the Cardinal should hire, but it’s a pretty tangential role. As we now both Kyouko and Yuri are competing, and trying to do their bosses proud. Kelvin Chen is involved too, still trying to get the sort of attention from Daddy that he wants. Kyouko seems pretty in over her head but Yuri is a player, and her interactions with her fellow-Okinawan boss are among the better moments in the episode.
As for cocktails, there’s reference to the Yukiguni (*Snow Country*), the 1959 winner by Iyama Keiichi, was was Japan’s oldest working bartender at 95 until his passing in 2011. And it looks delicious, I have to say. Yuri wins with her Okinawan-inspired cocktail, Kyouko gets Sasakura’s recommendation, and Chen screws up. He winds up back at his father’s hotel in Singapore, though still working as a bartender at least. Now that this little arc is over I’m hoping Bartender will revert to the narrative style that won me over in the first place.
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