Yeah, the dip in quality is palpable. Animation is minimal and backgrounds are not polished, the whole layout makes no sense. It still wants to balance the slice-of-life along the plot relevance with little success. The romance plot feels undeserved because we know very little of the characters at this point and there's more important things that should be getting attention. Overall a very forgettable episode, skippable if you don't mind missing a few bits of relevant plot.