Week 1 Summary
Episode 1 Summary (“Alien and Launching UFO Bath”):
“Japanese pork is only 135 yen per 100 grams!” But it’s too much for Mayuki, who sits at the bus stop, diligently reading. The crier’s price goes down each time he calls, until finally, as the bus pulls up and Mayuki is halfway on it, he hits 95 yen. Mayuki freezes, and then asks if that price includes tax…
Later, at home, Mayuki cheerfully cooks her pork while fending off the ravenous NieA. Mayuki’s chopstick-fencing skills are the stronger, but when the gas runs out on her small grill she has no choice but to accept NieA’s offer of “Cosmic Gas.” You can guess what happens when she puts that in her cooker… Deprived of her meat, Mayu continues to slave away at her work, washing out the bath and reading until she falls asleep (while NieA chews on the cat). She dreams of her late father, who gave her the watch whose small alarm now wakes her out of her slumber and into another laborious day. After dealing with NieA’s morning hyperactivity, she delivers papers in the rain and heads for school to register for classes. There she meets Chiaki, a bubbly and intrusive but seemingly good-spirited and, most importantly, normal girl of Mayuki’s age. Chiaki is impressed with Mayu’s hard-working nature and invites her out for a bite to eat, and although Mayuki is saddened by the loss of funds this will entail it seems like she’ll finally make a real friend… until NieA shows up, in a black cape and sunglasses, and announces that she’s going to make some money by selling the trash she’s been gathering. (And when I say trash… well, it’s really junk.) But to Mayuki’s horror, Chaiki is thrilled by the prospect of getting to know a real alien—so much so that she whips out her laptop and begins a live update of her website! Chiaki, it seems, is an alien fanatic; enough so that she takes the two out and offers to pay for their food. NieA, of course, is in heaven…
When Chiaki finds out that Mayuki and NieA live in sight of the mothership, she simply can’t contain her joy and must see their home. Mayuki shows her the room (after stuffing NieA’s just-completed trash UFO into the closet) and they go up to the roof to view the mothership. The day’s hazy and the vista is unclear… but NieA announces that she has just the solution, and runs off the roof. Seconds later, an ominous rumbling heralds the return of the trash UFO: to poor Mayu’s horror (and Chiaki’s delight) it bursts through the roof, and NieA offers Chiaki a lift to see the mothership itself. Stars dancing in her eyes, Chiaki asks what kind of power source the UFO runs on. “A secret!” NieA says proudly as she takes off.
It’s a A/C adapter, of course. Plugged into the wall socket in Mayu’s room. And when the dust settles, the extent of the damage is pretty impressive…
Mayuki puts up a tarp over the hole in the roof and the three wash off their dirt in the bath. As the episode ends, poor Mayuki’s life is pretty much the same except that she now has an enormous hole in her roof, a new best friend who redefines “obsession,” and the start of the semester coming. She stares at her watch and asks her father to look over her—and if today was anything to go by, she’s going to need it…
Mayuki begins to suspect that the way NieA and Chiaki are hitting it off could be a very bad thing…