Sushi Pack - Disappearing Act

This one gets right down to business with some kind of glowing Jack-in-the-Box robbing a bank. It's about to make off in a fire truck, but the Pack shows up to apprehend it, only for it to disappear without a trace. Chief Flume shows up to commend the Pack on a job well done, but instead they have to admit that the perpetrator escaped. She's not surprised, as the same thing has been happening all over town: various weird items holding up stores, then disappearing when caught. At least the money didn't disappear, too. As Chief Flume drives off, Kani tries to figure out what could possibly be going on with these robberies, and hypothesizes that holograms may be the answer. She'll figure it out, with SCIENCE!

When the Sushi Pack gets back, Ben has dinner waiting for them (kind of a cop-out dinner, if you ask me: fresh fruit, tofu, and carrots cooked in honey), but Kani opts to skip it and get to work. Ben warns against it, but Kani trusts in her crabby exterior to get her through the night. All through the night, it turns out, as she works at her tiny laptop, munching on something (looks like those after dinner mints I like :d), and falling asleep a couple of times. Maguro checks in on her, and Kani shares what she's figured out so far: with a powerful enough computer, you can make a hologram that can manipulate magnetic fields, or something like that. Maguro heads to bed, and tells Kani to do the same, advice which she does not heed.
Elsewhere, Sugar Jimmy uses his own small computer to manipulate a lamp character in his bedroom. Despite being unmasked in his last appearance, he's back in his usual look, with his mother hounding him to get to bed. Y'know, there might be a reason he masqueraded as a 9-year-old for years. Anyway, he claims to be creating characters for his TV show, which his mother conveniently reminds him he no longer has. Jimmy claims his new characters will make him enough money to buy his own network for his show, all while chowing down on some candy, which his mother also points out is not good for him. He gets annoyed by all her nagging and tells her first that the candy gives him energy and second to just go to bed already and let him work in peace.

The next morning, the rest of the Pack walks in on Kani, who worked all night long checking out police reports from the previous night. While Tako examines them, Maguro gets curious about what the heck Kani's eating. Turns out they're jelly beans, which Kani, like Jimmy, claims give her energy, although Maguro derides them for being pure sugar. And eating them all night? Bleh. Tako notices that one of ten of the robberies the night before were at candy stores, and Kani berates herself for not noticing that herself. The others tell her to get some breakfast and take a nap, but she doesn't want to take the time out of her investigation. Wasabi asks if he can get her anything, and she requests soda and chips. Again, how she has the stomach for anything after eating jelly beans all night long, I have no clue.

While Kani works, the rest of the Pack eat Ben's crazy granola for breakfast, and then Wasabi and Ikura start to head out to get Kani some chips, since Ben doesn't stock any junk food (not after the episode "Sweet Tooth," anyway). Ben, of course, is not having any of that, or rather, not letting Kani have any. Instead, he decides to make her something involving carrots and pineapple (???). Before he can get down to cooking, Kani arrives, looking much worse than before, so he offers her an orange slice. She turns him down, but takes Tako up on his offer of a seat and fills in the rest of the Pack on her activities. In the past fifteen minutes or so (however long they were eating breakfast) she looked over all the police reports, candy store locations, and travel tickets purchased from the night before, but she's too tired to make heads or tails of them. She's so tired, in fact, that she collapses right then and there. The others take the print-outs she made and split the work between the four of them so Kani can rest.

After a quick montage, the Pack tries to figure out the culprit from the clues: most of the robberies were done by human-sized versions of toys and half the candy stores in town were hit. Putting together "a big kid" and "a sweet tooth" leads Wasabi to make the obvious conclusion: Sugar Jimmy! Kani can't figure out why she couldn't put it together herself, and Ben tells her it's because she didn't get enough rest. He also offers her the orange again, and this time she takes it. With the location of the next candy store to be hit, the Pack takes off to stake it out. Sure enough, Jimmy shows up with his lamp hologram in tow. The Pack heads in after him, but Kani is still tired and can't quite roll like the others. In fact, she falls asleep mere footsteps from the Sushi Craft. Fortunately, Wasabi notices and calls the others' attention to her. They abort the mission to get Kani home for some overdue sleep in her own bed.

Two days later, Kani wakes up feeling fan-freaking-tastic, and owns up to the fact that she should have known better than to skip eating real food and sleeping. The Pack, meanwhile, took advantage of her downtime to figure out Jimmy's next step: a visit to the Wharf City Sugar Exchange (what the?). At the Exchange, Jimmy pulls out all his holograms and briefs them on their mission, giving the exposition that the Sugar Exchange is where "adults trade money for sugar." He apparently hasn't slept this whole time, but since his holograms are programmed to rob the exchange, he doesn't really have to be all that alert. He and his holograms storm the Exchange, only to find it devoid of any people. But not devoid of the Sushi Pack! Kani even confronts him directly, but he just kicks her away. So she pinches him right on the nose, causing him to flail around and drop his laptop, breaking it and degenerating the holograms. Jimmy melts down, but is cuffed by the police and lead to jail. So much for his big showbiz plans. Kani caps off the episode with the lesson one more time, promising to "eat right and sleep tight" from now on.

Health food is weird. Sugar Jimmy is weird. So all in all, it was kind of a weird episode. But I gotta say, even when she's horribly sleep-deprived, Kani is still cute! It's just a different kind of cute, perhaps even a weird kind of cute. And definitely an aesop for our times, eh? So all in all, not too bad.