Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid Episode 5: Maid Skills

After getting an episode that mostly focused on Kanna previously, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid‘s fifth episode focuses on Tohru. Let’s see what she got up to, then.

The episode begins showing us that Tohru’s skills have a maid have improved – she has an almost perfect morning.
Meanwhile, at Miss Kobayashi’s workplace, one of her colleagues notices that she is not quite as stoic as she was before.

Tohru studies up on how to pursue love

Tohru decides to go and peek in on Miss Kobayashi at work. She uses one of her ’48 maid skills’, perception blocking to sneak into the place. Of course, perception blocking is actually magic.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Tohru watches Miss Kobayashi

Tohru gets to see Miss Kobayashi lend a hand to her colleagues around the office, as well as get hassled by the chief. Tohru isn’t too happy to see that, so she trips the chief. It seems Miss Kobayashi might be aware of Tohru’s presence, though.

Miss Kobayashi had a feeling that Tohru was there

Miss Kobayashi says that it must have been boring watching her work, but Tohru says that she wanted to learn more about the woman she loves. After that exchange, Miss Kobayashi and Tohru walk home together with Miss Kobayashi musing to herself that she can’t remember what she was like before Tohru came into life.

Our cutaway gags feature Kanna and Riko interacting during school, with this reaction played as a running gag

Moving on from that, Tohru goes shopping and ends up bumping into a familiar face.

Fafnir decided he wants to live in the human world

Tohru takes Fafnir back to Miss Kobayashi’s place, and tries to come up with an idea for a place where he could live.

Miss Kobayashi’s place is out of the question

Having seen Miss Kobayashi move, Tohru decides to prepare all the necessary things for Fafnir to do that as well. Whilst they are out, Fafnir asks about Tohru’s decision to stay in the human world. He also brings up the fact that Tohru will outlive Miss Kobayashi.

Tohru has no regrets about being with Miss Kobayashi

After their conversation, Tohru’s objective to find Fafnir somewhere to live hits a snag. However, Tohru has a flash of inspiration and knows someone who Fafnir can stay with.

Makoto Takiya is willing to allow Fafnir to stay with him

Next, Tohru and Kanna watch some television, where they see a man bend a spoon with ESP.

Tohru and Kanna are amazed by the show of ESP

Tohru and Kanna are convinced that humans possess hidden powers. Miss Kobayashi demonstrates the spoon-bending trick to them, but they are still amazed by it. Kanna discovers a book about awakening ESP, so we get a montage of the two dragons training to do just that.

This, meditating and sparring are just a few of the things Tohru and Kanna do during the montage

Despite all their training, the dragons still find themselves unable to bend any spoons. However, Miss Kobayashi guides Tohru through how to do it. She also says that she should just focus on the things that only she can do.

Perhaps Tohru just wants to understand humans

Miss Kobayashi has something to say to Tohru, but doesn’t quite get there before Tohru’s trying to show of a power unique to her. After that, there’s a magic show on TV which will be showing the ‘super magic of instant teleportation’. A girl climbs into one box, and is expected to emerge from the other one. Instead…

Tohru appears

We end with Kanna offering extra food to Riko during lunch

At this point in the season, I can safely say that Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is my favourite show out of all those I chose to watch for winter. Tohru’s infatuation with Miss Kobayashi is great – it doesn’t come across as overbearing, and there’s definitely some hints that Miss Kobayashi may reciprocate those feelings. Miss Kobayashi knows Tohru is present when her perception blocking is up, she seems grateful for the change she has experienced courtesy of Tohru, and then there’s whatever she intended to say to Tohru after she showed her how to bend a spoon.
Fafnir’s appearance in this episode was interesting – he bought up the subject of Miss Kobayashi’s life span which is kind of a depressing topic. However, Tohru’s retort to that was genuinely sweet.
Fafnir staying with Makoto is pretty great as well – Tohru hit the nail on the head with that one. Fafnir may not appreciate humans, but it seems that video games are a good way to distract him from that.
The ESP segment was enjoyable – that montage provided some funny moments and Tohru’s teleportation trick made me laugh. We also got another genuinely touching moment between Miss Kobayashi and Tohru during that segment as well.

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid has a great mix of humour and heart-warming moments – sometimes together, sometimes as their own separate things. Kanna may stand out most whenever the focus is on her, but this episode shows that the other characters all have their own charms as well.