Ristorante Paradiso Episodes 5, 6 and 7 Roundup

Catch-up on Episodes 5, 6 and 7 of Ristorante Paradiso (リストランテ・パラディーゾ)

I’ve fallen behind in blogging this show but finally managed to watch the episodes that I missed. Instead of giving my usual rambling commentary, this time I’ll just do a short overview/comments of each episode. Am I still enjoying the show? Yes, very much so. The anime did well to flesh out the characters and their relationships with each other. The animation has been consistently wonderful and the bgm is simply sublime. This has become an enjoyable series that just begs you to watch each episode at your own relaxing pace and that is exactly what I’ve been doing. So then, onwards to the overview.

Episode 5: GiGi and Lorenzo are brothers?!


Nosey Nicoletta managed to get Lorenzo to talk about GiGi and found out from him that they are brothers. The revelation surprises her because they don’t look alike. The thing is that both Lorenzo and GiGi shared the same mother but different fathers. But there’s a huge twist to their family saga in that their fathers were both brothers. Lorenzo revealed that his father had an affair with the elder brother’s wife and she happened to be GiGi’s mom. Confused? So the two offspring are half brothers and cousins because their dads are brothers. As a result of the affair, GiGi’s dad cut all ties with Lorenzo’s dad.  Therefore, the two estranged siblings only met years later when Lorenzo was in his twenties. Both did not want to be involved in their family feud.

Their meeting eventually led GiGi to go against his dad’s wishes and worked for Lorenzo and his dad. Their friendship and relationship continue to remain strong right up to the present time. Nicoletta understood that because of Lorenzo’s family troubles in the past, it maybe the reason her mother never told him that she was married before. He doesn’t want a repeat incident to occur. I like the backstory of the two gentlemen. It certainly explains their close relationship. GiGi has always been the way he is since way back then, a man of few words. Boy, is he a sharp guy. He noticed the resemblance between Nicoletta and Olga and tells Nicoletta that she shares the same smile as her mother. Wahaha…I love GiGi’s character.

Episode 6: Vito and the gang advise a flirty guy whose marriage is in trouble


This episode is about a young couple whose marriage are getting shaky due to the husband’s roving eyes for other young women.  The wife plans to seek a divorce.  Vito and the gang ends up advising the forlorn hubby when they met the him at Enoteca. Just so happens that his wife is having dinner with GiGi..rofl. The guy got jealous but Vito sort of implied that if you gotta flirt with the ladies, you better know where your real heart lies. This speaks very much of his strong and loving relationship with his own young wife Marina whom we get to meet in this episode as well. Vito is friendly with the other ladies but when it comes to Marina, she’s always first in his heart. I supposed that’s one of the very reason why Marina trust him. The guy got the nudge and decide to work things out with his wife. It appears that the wife wants to work things out too. So, all’s well that ends well.   It’s nice that we got to know a bit more about Vito and Marina, particularly how Marina met Vito. They’re such a fun couple to watch too.

Episode 7: Everyone gets involve in Francesco’ Birthday Bash


This is such a lovely episode about how everyone got involved in organizing Francesco’s birthday. Francesco is Luciano’s grandson whom we first met in episode 2. But this episode is also about how the gang fooled and surprised Luciano with his daughter’s instigation. The funny part was when Claudio and Nicoletta along with Francesco went out to shop for stuff.  They nearly ran into Luciano with whom they tried hard to avoid meeting, for fear of him finding out about the gang’s involvement in Franci’s birthday party. But it turns out that Luciano spotted both Claudio and Nicoletta happily walking together. He thought they were out on a secret date…lol. Luckily he didn’t see Franci who was hiding in a shop or else the surprise would have been ruined. It’s clear that Luciano adores his grandson. This prompted his daughter to do something extra special for him by not letting him do anything except picking the cake.  I think it’s a wonderful gesture from daughter to father. Luciano’s *wtf* look when he arrived at the birthday party was priceless.

It’s also lovely to see that Claudio and Nicoletta are getting more comfortable with each other although, Claudio is still spotting his wedding ring. I wonder when is he going to fully move on from his failed marriage. It just seems like he’s giving Nicoletta mixed signals. Oh well, never mind that the show doesn’t always get the Italian culture right down pat, this is still another wonderful episode with subtle character exposition which is rather enjoyable to watch.

See more screencaps on the following pages.

Pages: 1 2 3 4