This episode — perhaps this entire series — is like a portal to a long, forgotten past. It’s full of things I’ve only seen or heard about but have never done — like using a cleaning service! Yep, that’s right, I’ve never had to dry clean my clothes. Oh sure, I own a suit. Two, in fact. But by the time I became a professional working adult, barely any employer around me actually requires their employees to wear one. I’ve worn my suits a grand total of… three times? And one of those times was for a jacket-required, high-end restaurant. The suits don’t even fit me anymore, because I’ve lost weight since I last wore them. So going into this show, I had no clue that a cleaning service would actually examine each garment you hand them one-by-one in front of the customer. I certainly had no clue that they would stare so pensively at the clothes, too. I’ve never even considered going to a cleaning service just for a tomato sauce stain. My washing machine seems to handle that just fine.

But that’s what this show is. It’s a languid look into another world that feels so distant and almost alien to mine. This is a community in every sense of the word. Wakana, our protagonist, knows all of her customers by name. They bring her snacks for her exemplary work. Even paying your rent is done face-to-face via a physical envelope. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve cut an actual check! My world has gone fully digital. When Wakana goes for a jog in the morning, she can have a friendly chat with the locals. When was the last time I said hi to someone on the streets? I don’t, because I don’t know who they are. Hell, I don’t even know what my neighbor looks like. I sure as hell wouldn’t hop into a communal bath with them (toting a bucket full of shampoo and soap on the way home seems rather inconvenient). If you like this sort of thing, this show might be for you. But I dunno, it might be too low stakes for me.

I have two qualms about the show. I knew one thing going in: our protagonist has lost her memories. Unfortunately, the only reference to it in this opening episode is a single line: “It is the one thing I didn’t forget, after all.” This is in response to a customer casually saying, “You sure do love doing laundry, don’t you?” That’s it. If you went in blind and didn’t pay attention for just a couple of seconds, you would’ve completely missed Wakana’s one remark about her amnesia. In other words, this show is practically distilled slice-of-life, and I don’t know if there’s enough here to blog about week in and week out. My second qualm involves Wakana losing her composure around (sigh) a high school boy. I don’t mind age gaps, but it’s a boy. C’mon. When you lost your memories, did you also forget that you shouldn’t be taking an interest in minors? Why did my seemingly wholesome, sleepy, slice-of-life anime suddenly started gooning? Girl, put that away.

I usually prefer to take a break from the blog on Mondays. After all, I don’t want to burn myself out and update every single day of the week. In other words, Wash It All Away probably isn’t compelling enough to change my schedule. I’ll just keep an eye on it in my “Everything else” series of posts.

On the other hand, I finally watched the first episode of Journal with Witch, but I’m still debating whether or not to do a weekly post on it.