Netsuzou TRap – 03

Another five minutes of Hotaru fooling with Yume using “practice” as an excuse. Even Yume is starting to have her doubts, and while Takeda is totally unaware, Fujiwara has now caught the two kissing on the slopes.

Rather than elucidate Takeda on the situation, he decides to take Hotaru to his room for the night, leaving Yume little choice but to invite Takeda into hers, or leave him out in the cold. Not exactly forcing a choice, but certainly limiting them.

For the record, Fujiwara and Hotaru are (separately) in agreement that Yume has the power to stop this…but she has to want to. At least she knows Hotaru has the tendency to throw her off balance.

But at some point she’ll have to decide which way to tip the scales: first boyfriend, or best friend who seems to want more…or maybe she’ll continue to be in this state of limbo for the whole run of the show! Either way, if it’s all the same to ya’ll I think I’ll be stepping back from this.

Netsuzou TRap – 02

In its latest five minutes, NTR tries to get a little more granular with the relationship between Yuma and Hotaru. They go back years, and Yuma always played the protective role of shining knight when the Hotaru was teased.

Fast-forward to the present, and Yuma is still Hotaru’s only female friend. Yuma is still a little resentful that Hotaru found a boyfriend before her, but now that Yuma has one, Hotaru is being almost clingy with her teasing, and the kissing was a big deal for Yuma.

Yuma’s boyfriend Takeda is a pretty nice guy, proposing bold sleepover but changing it to a double date out of consideration for how close Yuma and Hotaru clearly are. But Hotaru was pretty blatantly manipulative with both Yuma and Takeda.

At the amusement park, we learn possibly why that is, and why Hotaru just might prefer Yuma: her boyfriend Fujiwara, has a bit of a temper, slamming his foot on the bench she’s sitting on when she refuses his advances. He’s also already suspicious about her and Yuma, while Takeda is blissfully unaware.

It would seem then, that Hotaru yearns to maintain the knight-and-damsel dynamic Yuma and her have always had. Hotaru just doesn’t seem that interested in Fujiwara. She seems to prefer Yuma, and wants her, whether Yuma has a decent boyfriend or not.

Netsuzou TRap – 01 (First Impressions)

In this very short (six minutes after OP and ED) piece, Yuma finds herself in a bit of a situation. After asking her close friend and neighbor Hotaru for advice on her boyfriend, finds herself being touched and French kissed by the other girl ostensibly as “practice” for her boyfriend. The thing is, Yuma feels like she liked Hotaru’s kiss more than her boyfriend’s.

Aside from looking a bit like Yui and Yukino from Oregairu, it’s hard to make any kind of in-depth analysis of Hotaru and Yuma. At the same time, we saw and heard pretty much all we needed to in order to set the stage, as described above. This isn’t complicated stuff!

I also liked fact that the boyfriends are pretty much afterthoughts for both the show and the girls so far, suggesting, based on the scant info so far, that they may simply have been acquired because it’s what you do. At the very least this kinda warrants a closer look; it’s not exactly a huge commitment!