Season one, episode three of Sunny, entitled “Mmmm, Hinoki,” displays the growth of Suzie’s (Rashida Jones) and Mixxy’s (Annie the Clumsy) friendship. At the beginning of the episode, we learn a mysterious group is monitoring Suzie through a random homebot. We know this before Suzie discovers it for herself. It’s been two weeks since Suzie received the fabricated proof of her husband Masa’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) death, and she hasn’t left the house. She’s been spending all of her time with her homebot Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura) and building trust with her.
While Suzie mourns the loss of Masa and their son Zen (Fares Belkheir), her mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg) deals with her own grief and social issues. Noriko faces judgment from some of her friends about the continuous postponement of Masa’s funeral. It goes against their tradition to wait this long for a funeral, so it starts to bring some unwanted attention to Noriko. She decides to plan the funeral for the next day without Suzie and insists she begins to mourn in a way that Noriko finds acceptable. Noriko tells Sunny to inform Suzie of the plans and gives her her mother’s pearls to wear to the service. Noriko also gives Suzie a drawing that Masa made; Suzie immediately recognizes it from the symbol Mixxy showed her in the home bot repair store. It is a symbol from a source on the dark web that teaches you how to illegally modify your homebot. Suzie understandably feels disrespected and angry that Noriko has made all the decisions without her input. This causes Suzie to leave the house for the first time in weeks. Suzie is so stressed that she manages to pick one shoe from two different pairs.
The first place Suzie goes after being home for weeks is straight to Mixxy’s job. She asks to speak with her, and they decide that Mixxy will stop by Suzie’s house later that night. As Mixxy and Suzie talk in the living room, Sunny overhears Mixxy suggest that Suzie get rid of Sunny. Sunny is immediately offended but doesn’t say anything; instead, she acts passive-aggressively towards Mixxy. After sharing what she has learned so far, Suzie asks Mixxy if she can help her learn more about where exactly this symbol is from and what it is used for. Mixxy brings Suzie and Sunny to a man in a sex shop that would know more than Mixxy. The man tells them to go to a host club called Wanted and ask for Tendo.
When they arrive at Wanted and ask for Tendo, they are told that Sunny is not allowed to go with them. Suzie tells Sunny to wait for her downstairs, and she and Mixxy follow the man leading them to Tendo. Once they get to a bouncer of sorts, they realize they are being led to a robot fight, and only Suzie will be let through. Suzie watches the robots fight, and it reminds her so much of Masa and Zen playing wrestling. As she watches, a man outside of the club finds Sunny and manipulates her to get her into the fighting ring. Suzie jumps in to retrieve Sunny before she gets hurt, and a strange woman blocks her to try and make Sunny stay. Sunny pushes her away, and the woman’s fake finger pops off. As Suzie and Sunny run away, Suzie mistakenly steps on the woman’s fake finger. The next day at Masa’s funeral, the strange woman makes an appearance.
Overall, this episode did a really good job of using parallels and flashbacks to display emotion. The first example of this happening in this episode is when Noriko hears that Suzie has been in bed for weeks. We see Noriko go to the second floor of her house, and as it pans to Masa’s old room, we transition into a flashback of when Masa went through depression and didn’t leave his room. When we cut back to Noriko, we see the familiar sadness on her face. Later on in the episode, as Suzie watches the robot fights, we see a flashback with direct parallels of Masa and Zen play wrestling. Not only are the movements the same, but the language is the same as well. In both of these scenes, the use of the color blue is significant to the emotions Suzie and Noriko feel.
Rating: 8/10