This episode revolved around the newest character to our cast, Paula. She runs a run-down weapon and tool repair store in Kalta but doesn’t receive a lot of business. To make her situation worse, she’s been given too much work by the Red Cat Brigade as well as the townspeople, so she’s perpetually chugging Reiji’s energy potions and pulling all-nighters, only to be exhausted the next day. That’s a hard lifestyle to maintain!
Reiji is introduced to Paula when Noela breaks the pharmacy’s spare knife, meaning Mina has nothing to cook dinner with. Noela and Reiji travel into town together and find Paula’s shop, but have some difficulty in finding what they need because a) the shop is so dark, b) the shop is kinda dirty, and c) the shopkeeper is nowhere to be found.
After Reiji and Noela finally meet Paula and she describes some of her metalwork woes, Reiji gets the idea to create some kind of a glue that will stick metal bits together. So he creates the fantasy world version of Krazy Glue.
Just like that, Paula is able to fix Anabel’s gauntlet as well as all the work she had backlogged. Unfortunately due to her childlike nosiness, Noela gets two of her fingers stuck together with Reiji’s superglue! And then Reiji’s hand gets stuck to Noela’s!! o_o
There was a cute scene between Reiji, Mina and Noela once they returned to the pharmacy. See, Mina’s had a few scenes where she freaks out about “dirty things” whenever another woman starts getting close to Reiji. He’s always brushed it off before, but this time when Mina starts really panicking over Reiji and Noela having to do things together like use the bathroom and going to bed, Reiji finally calls her out on her hypocrisy. Maybe MINA is the dirtiest pervert after all! After all she’s been harassing Reiji about intimacy with other women and doing “perverted things,” so what has Mina been thinking of? Mina whines about Reiji and Noela “bullying her,” but it’s all in good fun.
And of course, Reiji is able to create a solvent that dissolves the superglue, allowing himself and Noela to finally be separated. Mr. Super Pharmacist can do anything in this world after all!
The next day, Paula shows up “in her civilian clothes,” looking dressed to kill, and repays Reiji for his help. (With money of course – what did you think I meant??) Reiji thinks that’s the last he’s seen of Paula, but nope! She returns to Reiji’s shop day after day, complaining about her lack of customers and trying to get Reiji to talk “shop talk” with her.
In an effort to help Paula and encourage her to stop visiting him every day, Reiji kinda gets coerced into helping Paula clean her shop.
Together the pair open the blinds, wipe the dust off of everything, and Reiji even invents a new metal polish for Paula to use when cleaning her inventory. By the time the pair are done, the shop is so clean they could cut their next meal with a sword and eat off of a breastplate.
Does cleaning up Paula’s shop help attract more adventuring customers? Not yet, sadly. So Paula is still bored and over at Reiji’s shop pestering him when she has some free time. She is trying to encourage Reiji to think of ideas that might attract more adventurers to Kalta, but doesn’t want to put in any of the work to make it happen. Because really, can you see Reiji building a whole freaking dungeon from scratch?? I don’t think so!
I found this last section of the episode rather interesting because, for the first time, we see Reiji somewhat reciprocating the female attention given to him by another character. With some characters like Anabel or Ririka, Reiji sometimes shows moments of attraction but doesn’t actively pursue that character. However with Paula, that dynamic has changed! Paula’s a rather loud, sometimes bratty person, but deep down she has a good heart. She might just be lacking attention, seeing as she seems to be alone in her shop a lot. So she pesters Reiji to get him to engage with her and it works.
Even at the very end of the episode, when Paula feigns sadness when Reiji teases her about having no customers, she turns right around and calls him out on his thoughts. Reiji’s a nice guy so his reactions to Paula are sometimes a little predictable. But when she hits the nail on the head and correctly guesses what he’s thinking, Reiji then gets all flustered and tries to deny her accusations. It’s cute! A little manipulative on Paula’s part, but still cute!
With Drugstore in Another World being a reverse harem, I was assuming that the series would end without Reiji picking a romantic interest, but with Paula’s introduction maybe that will change? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Lastly, we got a longer scene at the end of this episode that gave us a proper introduction to the demon character we’ve been getting glimpses of. His name is Demon Lord Ejil and… he’s addicted to Reiji’s energy potions, haha. Ejil has his servant confined for three days as punishment for bringing back only one potion instead of two from Reiji’s shop, and it sounds like maybe he’s going to want to kidnap Reiji? That’s my guess. Or maybe Ejil will just show up at Reiji’s shop and demand all of Reiji’s energy potion inventory?
We’re at the halfpoint with this show – what do you think of Drugstore in Another World so far?
