Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! – 09 – Smelting My Heart

This week Hokkaido Gals jumps to the eve of White Day, and we’re reminded that there are other guys in this show, not just Tsubasa! The red-haired Matsuo asks him for advice on apologizing to Minami and Sayuri after being rude to the former and incurring the wrath of the latter on Valentine’s Day. Tsubasa tells him he doesn’t need to overthink it; a simple apology will suffice.

Matsuo goes the extra mile and gifts both Minami and Sayuri onion pies from Uzenya, which sound delish. As Tsubasa predicted, Minami doesn’t even remember Matsuo’s rudeness, while Sayuri is satisfied he did right. But what really puts smiles on the girls’ faces are bags of milk senbei (rice crackers) he made for them from scratch. Just look at Sayuri up there! That’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her!!

When Matsuo invites Tsubasa to join him and his dad smelt fishing on a still-frozen Lake Abashiri, it was looking like we were gonna have a bro-date, but Minami is fishing with her family, and joins the boys. When nothing bites, Matsuo goes to check on his dad, and after watching some makeup tutorial vids and in the midst of Tsubasa praising her looks and makeup skills, Minami decides to try swapping her lip balm for her lips.

The gambit fails, as Matsuo interrupts kiss from happening, but once they move to a new hole and catch a bunch of smelts, fry them up in tempura batter, and munch on them with seasoned rice-and-scallop onigiri, the two would-be smoochers are happy campers. Just a day after last week’s episode featured yakiniku, I went to a local Gyu-kaku with a friend for the same. Now I want smelts, scallop rice balls and senbei!

As a result of Tsubasa spending perhaps a bit too much time without his jacket on, he ends up with a rather nasty cold. Rena delivers a bottle of sports drink to keep him hydrated, but it’s Minami who visits him in his room to check on him. She feels responsible for his cold, and will “do anything he asks” to make up for it.

Tsubasa, perhaps a little looser thanks to his fever, reaches out and asks Minami simply to stay by his side, since he was feeling lonely. Delighted to, she takes his hand in hers and sits there admiring him until he falls asleep. While it’s clear Minami likes Tsubasa, she’d also happy with things staying this way forever. Sakura Ayane turns in a gentle, nuanced voice performance as Minami returns to the spotlight and dazzles.

Masamune-kun’s Revenge R – 07 – Masamune brulée

During her family’s big formal New Year’s celebration, Neko is off to fetch more sake when the little son of one of her relatives bumps into her. She neither spills the bottles on her tray nor vomits blood, which I’ll call a win. But seeing her relative for the first time since her wedding, when she was as small as this kid (only rounder).

Meanwhile, it’s been ten days since Christmas Eve, and Masamune and Aki haven’t spoken. Not a great way to start the year! As I said, it sucks for these two to run into problems so soon after becoming an official couple, but I suppose we do still have six episodes for that to be resolved.

Neko is reminiscing about the day she met Masamune when they were both kids. She was desperately shy, but he offered her a giant chicken wing from his pocket (a habit he’s since kicked). She then gets a text from Tae inviting her to join her, Kojuurou, and Masamune for the first shrine visit of the year.

While I know Masamune is freaking out about this hives thing, which his doctor suspects is due to stress, it’s still pretty mean to not only ghost Aki, but lie about her and Yoshino being busy so as to exclude them and spare him the awkwardness. Fortunately, he’s terrible at hiding the fact he’s troubled, and Neko notices something’s not right.

He notes that he still manages to laugh and have fun, and while he and Neko get a brief moment alone together, it’s not long enough for her to broach the topic of what’s troubling Masamune. Her suspicions are reinforced when she watches Yoshino breeze right past Masamune in the hallway without a peep.

When coincidence conspires to put both Neko and Masamune at the same hospital one day, she offers him a ride and some tea at her house. Her attendant Shidou-san is not pleased with his presence, but there’s nothing she can do about with whom her mistress spends her time.

Masamune expresses how the lack of anything wrong with him seems wrong in and of itself, even as he realizes the irony of coming to someone with such fraught medical history with his problems. He wonders if the thing stressing him out is holding something back, like not telling Aki about Yoshino’s role in separating them.

But Neko has a different theory: he’s burnt out and in a state of shock after his life’s goal of revenge was suddenly ended. His mind, body, and energies had been concentrated on that goal for so long, it’s only natural there’s a physical as well as psychological strain from its rapid termination.

She also wonders whether Masamune is hewing too close to his pretenses and preconceptions. He may have loved Aki, back then, before his heart was broken…but does he still love her now? Meanwhile, she owns up to having met him once before Aki did.

When she made advances on Masamune earlier, she was clinging to the meager memories of the past, but now she makes clear she loves the Masamune of today, here and now. She draws in for another kiss, this time one that is free of the past…but Shidou breaks it up.

Neko tells her attendant she doesn’t need to worry, as she sees the hives develop on Masamune’s hand. Her smile and trembling hands betray her heartbreak all over again as she declares “no mistakes will be happening today”. She then considers if she truly has cast off her pretenses and preconceptions.

I truly felt for Neko, being a good friend to Masamune, and testing the waters only to be burnt herself, not by his words this time, but by his very skin. But in this she’s not alone; that’s now two girls who have given Masamune hives since he learned the truth.

As he views Aki’s text asking if he’s okay after visiting the hospital, Masamune vents his frustration over not knowing what truth there is to find that might cure him of his stress hives by shouting on a bridge. This startles someone on street level and causes them to fall.

He apologetically rushes to their aid to find it’s his ex-master Yoshino who fell. Despite her efforts to ignore and avoid him, circumstances have brought them back together, and I think it would do them both a power of good to talk about things a little more.

Urusei Yatsura – 23 (Fin) – They’re All Winners

The season 1 finale of Urusei Yatsura is given over entirely to the Tomo-1 Queen Contest teased last week. Seemingly entirely arranged by Ataru, it’s a multi-faceted competition that draws upon the myriad skills and specialties of its five finalists: Lum, Shinobu, Ran, Sakura, and Ryuunosuke. None of them are especially enthusiastic about participating, but a 150,000 yen prize is nothing to sneeze at.

The challenges range from “guess what’s in the box” (Ten with a watermelon, guessed by Ryuu) to bottomless ramen bowls (won by noted glutton Sakura), culminating in a five-woman final battle in which everyone dons wrestling boots and swimsuits (though Ryuu eschews a bikini top for the traditional binding). Knowing she’s at a strength disadvantage, Ran kisses Ryuu, Shinobu, and Sakura, sapping their energy.

That backfires spectacularly, as the five women aren’t fighting each other per se, they have to go up against five wild beasts from the local zoo (Ataru ensured the event was heavily promoted and full of advertisements). For some reason, the beasts are anthropomorphic, otherwise they’d tear our girls to bits.

When Sakura gets ensnared in an Anaconda’s grip, Lum buys time with her electro-kicks for Ran to re-kiss everyone she kissed and give them back their superhuman strength. The battle finishes with all five women teaming up to K-O all five beasts.

Then, curioulsy, the judges determine that the result of the Queen Contest is a five-way-tie, due in part (or rather mostly) because they forgot to keep score as the battle royale got more chaotic. Ataru presents the consolation prize: 30,000 yen worth of takoyaki waffles, and then all the series’ characters come out of the woodwork to join the lunacy. Even Kurama, who hasn’t been seen in months, makes an appaearance.

At the end of the day, the one to profit the most is Ataru, thanks to all the kickbacks he got from the businesses he advertised throughout the contest. As he counts his money, Lum voices her frustration, and Ataru ends up tripping and almost falling straight into a kiss with Lum. Their lips are only inches apart before Ataru withdraws.

Before Lum can get her Darling to declare her the “Queen of his heart”, a still-furious Sakura and Shinobu track him down to beat the stuffing out of him for everything he made them go through. As they chase him into the sunset, with Lum taking flight to join the pursuit, the sun sets on Urusei Yatsura, but only for now.

After the credits, Ataru and Lum announce a Part 2 will air in 2024. As it’s been a great-looking diversion for these last twenty-three weeks, I see no reason not to tune back in!

Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack – 05 – Senpai Down!

Naoto and Hayase aren’t fooling anyone. Certainly not their friends, who catch them red-handed—or rather, holding hands with fingers intertwined. It doesn’t matter if it was technically an accident; it was the result of them messing around trying to grab one anothers’ sleeves. This isn’t one-sided teasing, it’s just plain PDA!

Last week portended a reversal of Naoto’s house visit to Nagatoro, and sure enough, Naoto wakes up one morning feeling like crap. His mom (whom we meet for the first time) has a work trip but offers to stay home for his sake, but he says he’s not a little kid anymore. Now we know where he gets his fuwafuwa hair!

When Hayase can’t find Naoto at school and texts then calls him, she learns that Naoto is home, having caught her cold. Two shakes of a black cat’s tail later, she’s ringing his doorbell. Then, worried he might’ve passed out (just like he was about her) she enters his yard and presses against the screen door. Once she’s in his room (which he notes is weird), she immediately begins searching for porn, as you do!

When he protests and starts coughing uncontrollably, Hayase calls of the search…for today. She’s here not just to return the favor, but because she wants to care for and pamper her senpai. This is the perfect scenario for her to get closer to him in any number of ways, including tenderly touching foreheads to check his temperature.

She cools him down with a cold compress, then makes him some rice porridge, which he allows her to feed to him without protest. At this point Naoto is very dizzy and out of it, and his dream of Hayase in a business suit acting as his doting wife bleeds into real life, to the point he thanks her and casually calls her by her first name, Hayase.

This obviously flusters Hayase to no end, but she’d probably been hoping he’d do it ever since he learned it from her sister. In fact, she wants to hear him call her Hayase again, but he’s fallen asleep again. This gives her the idea to kiss him, and she gives him every opportunity to stop her if he’s playing dead, drawing closer and closer…

…until Naoto’s mom comes home. Hayase’s loafers are in the genkan, so even with her athletic ability, jumping out the window isn’t a viable option. So she heads down, encounters Senpai’s mom, and explains that she heard he was sick and came by to check on him. Like Hayase’s friends, Naoto’s mom wasn’t born yesterday! The next morning, Naoto is right as rain, and his mom asks about the flustered cutie.

When they meet up for the walk to school, Naoto and Hayase are uncharacteristically shy and awkward towards each other, and Hayase overcompensates by piling on the mock judo-kicking. Naoto grabs her leg to halt her attack, just when her upskirt is in full view. That’s the scene when Gamou, Yoshi, and Sakura approach, once again remarking how the lovebirds it again first thing in the morning.

I don’t ask much. I don’t need much. As long as Hayase and Naoto are being a delightfully sweet, playful, and adorable couple, I’m a happy camper! With the exchange of house visits, Don’t Toy with Me 2 continues to offer that in spades. I’m firmly ensconced in rom-com Laid Back Camp!

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury – 10 – Drifting Further Away

On the surface this has the makings of a cooldown episode after the big Earth House win over Grassley. GUND-Arm Inc. continues its steady progress towards becoming a real medical technology company (something Bel is all to happy to help with), prosthetic tests go well, and Suletta is checking things off her wish list.

But while Suletta can giggle giddily at the prospect of making her friends laugh at her jokes or sharing keychains, at no point did I not feel thoroughly uneasy this week. Geturk and Zenelli seem to have had their fill of Delling and are preparing to off him, while Miorine has been away for two weeks on GUND-Arm business.

Everyone wants a piece of GUND-Arm, Inc., but between flying around trying to sell her 2-month-old company to investors and suddenly being in the decent-to-good graces of her father for showing true business acumen, Miorine is perhaps too preoccupied to notice the danger inherent in both purported friend and foe wanting a piece of that company.

Guel Jeturk, all but disowned, has seemingly started from zero as a ship maintenance crew grunt, and we finally learn that, perhaps among other things, Nika has been serving as a go-between for Shaddiq with what seems to be an Earthian terrorist group for hire that live in similar dingy conditions to the Iron-Blooded Orphans of a previous Gundam.

Zenelli is taking elements of his father’s and Papa Geturk’s plans and forging his own. As an orphan, he had already been forced to grow up fast, so school duels simply don’t hold his interest, if they ever did. Like Miorine, he’s ready to be a player at the grown-ups’ table.

Suletta is most definitely not. She’s stuck in having-fun-at-school mode, and Elan Ceres—or rather the latest enhanced Elan clone—knows it. He has a “wicked personality” similar to the real Elan and has basically been sent to seduce Suletta, building on her existing sorta-crush to sabotage the engagement, and possibly give the Piel Group the Aerial without having to duel.

Suletta is only an inch away form her first kiss when she rushes off to what seems like the most important duty for her: tending to Mine’s garden while she’s away. When she sees strange men in the pod, she hastens to shoo them out, but Miorine has returned early to no fanfare, having purchased a spaceship for quicker transport.

The men are professional gardeners she’s hired to take care of the garden as she’ll be away on business more and more. This crushes Suletta, who believed that as her groom she was the only one Miorine could ask. It’s also telling that after 16 days and change apart, Miorine doesn’t even look Suletta’s way, never mind show the slightest bit of affection.

Elan had just planted the seed that Suletta was merely a shield to keep anyone else from marrying Miorine, and between her hiring someone else to do the gardening and hiring Elan as a second test pilot, the episode ends with Suletta feeling as alone and useless as she felt on her first day of school.

The independence and survival of GUND-Arm relies on Delling Rembran and his unquestioned authority over the Benerit Group. But as the Dawn of Fold, the Earthian group led by Nika’s father figure, commences their attack on Delling’s Plant Quetta (with what looks an awful lot like a pair of Gundams), that authority is being questioned, and the future of Miorine’s company is as uncertain as her engagement to Suletta.

While this was pretty much a huge bummer of an episode (particularly for a Miorine X Suletta supporter), I’m actually glad things are continuing to progress rather than have a sense-of-security lulling episode less stocked with foreboding. Things. Guel is also looking like a skilled mobile suit pilot who was embedded with his maintenance group so that he’d be in the right place at the right time for the Quetta attack. Or is it just coincidence? We’ll soon find out.

More than a married couple, but not lovers. – 05 – Sharing fabric softener

Akari’s crush continues to be supplanted by feelings for the mock husband right in front of her, and throughout the episode she expresses this though lots of teasing and physical contact, starting with a loving wife’s hug before Jirou heads off for school duties. Little does he know that Shiori has arranged to swap duties with her sporty pianist wife Hamano Mei so she can get some quality time with Jirou.

Before the arrangement, Mei is trying to get Shiori to do what needs to be done to get the man she wants—which may yet involve a giant Acme-brand mallet with which to smack him over the head. Shiori says “Jirou doesn’t think of me that way” but Mei knows better; Shiori just needs to make her feelings plain and obvious before Akari snatches him up. Akari’s galfriends only tease her about the prospect of falling for Jirou, but they’re on the right track!

Despite my increasing affinity for Akari and Akari x Jirou, being a sucker for childhood friends I relished the opportunity for Shiori and Jirou to hang out together without interruptions from Akari, Minami, or Sadaharu (who sits this episode out; I don’t mind the guy but appreciated a break from him).

The results are predictable: having class duties together reminds them of when they had them in middle school, and the two settle into that warm, happy nostalgia and familiarity. But when it comes time to leave the safety of the past and try to grasp the future with a solicited kiss, Akari thinks he’s dreaming, while Shiori withdraws at the last moment and must beat the shit out of the erasers in frustration with herself.

Unfortunately, this leaves Jirou with the same impression as the start of the day: that while there are occasional signs here and there, Shiori doesn’t like him “that way”. That leaves him gloomy on the balcony an otherwise dazzlingly starry night, and Akari joins him with mugs of hot milk in a genuinely heartwarming gesture of trying to cheer him up.

That inherent kindness in Akari’s character is at odds with a deep resentment that he’s feeling so down over another girl, which of course reflects how he feels whenever she gets riled up about Minami. Akari decides to press the teasing by insisting he start calling her by her name, and is shocked when he does it immediately, while explaining why he had trouble before.

Akari gets much more than she bargained for here, and has to retreat before Jirou sees her beet-red face and ears. Gathering her patio door curtain around her, she curses these confusing feelings. To this point she’s been in love with the idea of Minami, but that idea is losing ground to the reality of Jirou.

When their teacher announces that practical couples’ scores will be combined and everaged together, Jirou is anxious, as he’s not sure the extent of Akari’s academic prowess. But rather than simply presume she’s a dunce, he asks her about it, and her tone and body language make it clear she’s far from confident about it.

He asks her to cancel her karaoke plans so they can study together, but she says it’s “not so easy” to break said plans because she was invited by other guys, as opposed to her galfriends. To this, Akari says “I’m asking for you too here,” and she relents, but believes he’s only being this “desperate” for Shiori’s sake. Meanwhile, Mei continues to prove that she may just be the most deserving of Shiori’s hand in marriage. If nothing else, she’s trying her best to make Shiori happy and successful in love.

Jirou finds that while Akari picks things up fast, she hates the fundamental idea of studying. Her frustration from the assumption he’s only doing this for him and Shiori leads her to up her teasing and flirting game considerably, cozying up to Jirou and saying he can “do whatever he wants”.

Jirou averts his gaze, and ends up seeing that Akari figured did a challenging math problem correctly. The rest of the study session progresses and their couple score continues to go up. When they’re done, Akari isn’t ready to eat dinner yet, and would rather get Jirou to admit she makes his heart race.

She does this by jumping into his lap, but she grows more frustrated when he tries to ignore her, so she turns around so they’re front-to-front, and tells him he can look at her if he wants. When he still won’t, she grabs him even tighter, and he ends up flipping them over so she’s on her back.

At this point the two are in dangerous territory, and Akari can hear his heart pounding now. It’s here where Jirou starts to let his hormones take over, caressing her cheek. Akari says he can’t once, then twice, but then takes hold of his shoulder to pull him nearer, and closes her eyes to prepare for a kiss …

I knew amorous congress was going to be interrupted by something, be it doorbell, phone, or Sadaharu. This time, it’s Jirou’s nose, which suddenly starts bleeding. Though Jirou thanks his nose profusely for stopping him from doing something he’d regret. Once the bleeding is stemmed by a tissue, the two fold laundry together—the hot-and-heaviness replaced by a picture of domestic bliss.

Akari laughs at Jirou for getting a bloody nose in such a situation, but Jirou in turn asks her what is up with her pestering him so heavily all night. She brings up how she’s frustrated by how desperately he’s trying to prevent Shiori from leaving him behind. He, in turn, tells her he’s not just doing it for him and Shiori, but her and Minami, and further tells her he’s sure she’d reach A-rank with anyone, not just him. He simply hoped that after she’d gained so many points for them, he’d try to contribute by helping with her studies.

Jirou doesn’t know just how happy it makes Akari to hear that, because as far as he’s concerned she doesn’t feel anything serious for him, and her amorous actions have only been to tease him. But Akari is feeling less grateful that he’s doing this for her and Minami when it’s currently the two of them together that makes her heart race for real. She thinks about a future where they switch partners, and their clothes no longer smell like the same fabric softener, and … it’s not necessarily something she wants.

Fuukoi continues to do tremendous character work in the midst of what will always be a silly and contrived premise, and its deft “couch time” animation and Akari’s facial expressions in general continue to impress. There’s still a lot of confusion and awkwardness from all parties, but Shiori is gradually fumbling her way closer to Jirou, while dangerous couch session Akari’s true feelings may be coming into better focus.

Jirou’s self-loathing-fueled obliviousness can’t hold out forever. If it isn’t already, his confidence in Shiori being his one and only will surely start taking the same dents as Akari’s in Minami being hers.

Fruits Basket – 53 – Let’s Make Footprints Together

Kuragi Machi hates perfection. She hates it wherever it is, such that when presented with a fresh box of chalk, she must dash it on the floor, shattering every piece. Two classmates report her stunt to Yuki at the StuCo office, mentioning a rumor she was kicked out of her home for trying to kill her brother. Machi stops by the office just in time to see her classmates have spread the rumor to Yuki, and runs off with her awful parents’ voices in her head.

Manabe partially corroborates the classmates’ story, but he admits he only knows the story the parents fed him, so it might not be true. What Manabe does know is that he once watched Machi obsessively make footprints in the freshly fallen snow. Manabe takes Yuki to Machi’s apartment, which Yuki charitiably describes as the “Sea of Decay”, while Manabe hands him one of her bras. Manabe then leaves the two alone to take out the trash.

Manabe leaves the two alone to take out the trash, and as Yuki tapes her cracked window, Machi tells him to ask and believe whatever he wants, since she’s given up trying to set the record straight. Yuki rather easily deduces that Machi is bothered by orderly things. It harkens to the fact her awful parents demanded absolute perfection, then dismissed her as boring and lacking in individuality.

When her little brother was born, her parents got the son they wanted, and had no further use for her. Yuki rejects her being something her parents “got wrong”, as she worked hard to be the Machi he knows and he’s glad she’s there. Machi admits she was never jealous of her brother; she was only trying to place a blanket on him when she thought he might get cold.

It was her psycho mom who accused her of trying to kill him, leading to her exile and the rumors. Then Yuki says if the snow piles up, he’ll make footprints in it with her. That hella-smooth line almost leads to a kiss between the two, were it not for the unsilenced phone of an  eavesdropping Manabe.

The next day at the StuCo meeting, Kimi thoughtlessly slides another fresh box of chalk in Machi’s face, but just as Machi is freaking out, Yuki reaches over and snaps one of the pieces without interrupting his announcements.

For the first time, Machi looks forward to the next time it snows, while I look forward to Machi and Yuki growing closer. After the meeting, Yuki makes a quick check-in and is just in time to save Tooru from a ladder off which Kyou falls. Then he heads to an “appointment” with none other than graduating senior Minagawa Motoko.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Motoko despite her often underhanded tactics to get a little closer to Yuki, so I was perfectly fine with her getting a proper sendoff scene here, in which she wants to make clear and plain her feelings to Yuki not so he’ll return them, but just so he knows she loved him, he made her school days happy, and she hopes he’ll find happiness too, or greater happiness if he’s already happy.

We then learn why Nao has been so hostile towards Yuki and even called him his “rival”, when he locates Motoko giving the classroom one last look and tries his best to make his feelings known to her. Like she did with Yuki, it’s more about wishing her well in the future than confessing and expecting an answer, and Motoko’s response seems more than enough for Nao.

The final few minutes are a grab bag, as Hiro meets his baby sister Hinata, Kagura worries about Isuzu’s whereabouts to Hatori and Shigure, and Isuzu emerges from what looks like a building on the Souma compound, donning a white robe and having just cut her hair short. I couldn’t help but notice how closely she resembles Akito from behind, and that might just be intentional on her part. To be continued…

Ao Haru Ride – 10

No one likes being left out, especially when it involves two people you’d rather not be together alone, as Kou and Yuuri are to Futaba. The fact that the same weird vibe is coming off them, and they make the same pause before assuring her “it’s nothing”, only make her more suspicious about it being not nothing, which it isn’t.

“It”, in fact, is the very thing Futaba wanted to know: more about Kou. She didn’t know his mom died, and the shrine is what he showed Yuuri (Yuuri later confesses she was glad she knew something about Kou Futaba didn’t). When Futaba learns what it was, she feels like a selfish, awful person for needing everything to be about her feelings. That leads to tears that Kou can’t help but dry, and they come the closest yet to a kiss before Tanaka pops into the kitchen, ruining everything.

Kou has to go out for his job, so Tanaka takes Futaba home, and getting the feeling she’s someone who wants to know, he’s very generous in filling in some of the blanks in regard to how the present Kou came about from the one she knew, as well as why Kou is cold towards his older brother. Basically, Tanaka was busy teaching his first year of school, leaving the younger Kou alone in the hospital to sit by their mom as she slowly died.

Kou bore the brunt of the full force of slowly, steadily losing someone he loved before his eyes, while Tanaka only got the odd glance, busy as he was. That experience made Kou who he is today: someone reluctant to make friends; to get too close; to fall in love again. As much as he may care for Futaba, part of him is paralyzed by that fear: that if he tries to care about something again too much, he’ll lose it.

Futaba has made it pretty clear: she wants to be with him. She lost him once, and doesn’t want to lose him again. She also sees through his cold act to the kindness he’s always had, which Tanaka confirms. Futaba’s challenge is to get him to believe it’s alright to open up and get close again; that happiness is worth some degree of risk. That won’t be easy, especially with a still determined Yuuri also gunning for him.

Ao Haru Ride – 08

“Today, no matter, what, I will definitely, definitely tell Yuuri properly!” As soon as Futaba said this, we were convinced she’d lose her nerve when it came down to it, a fear reinforced when two seconds later she says “I bet I’ll still lose my nerve when it comes down to it.” The odds of her telling Yuuri drop even more when Yuuri, unaware of the hammer Futaba’s trying to bring down on her, invites Shuuko to join them for ¥100 donuts.

Prove me wrong, I said to the anime I like to think is based on one of Nozaki-kun’s shoujo manga: show me you can move forward and resolve this shit.” And what do you know, Ao Haru Ride answered the challenge. Even with Shuuko around and Yuuri going on about Kou, Futaba still gets it out; gets it all out, in the first five minutes of the episode. That was as welcome and refreshing as a cold shower on a searing summer day (though we’ve had precious few of those round these parts.)

And wouldn’t you know it, Yuuri takes it extremely well…at first. Her immediate reactions involve saying “You too?”; noting how she’s not surprised, as Kou’s so totally hot and all; and acknowledging she’s at a disadvantage since Futaba’s closer to him. Then she goes to the bathroom and we get the first of two instances of characters crying for multiple reasons (Futaba’s the other, later on). One could say Yuuri is crying because her friend loves the same guy as her, which means she could potentially lose of them.

But she’s also crying because Futaba obviously went through hell getting those words out, but she did. As Futaba thinks to herself earlier, this is the crux of her growth as a person: no longer “friends in name only” with anyone, she’s allowed to say what she wants, and in this case, needs to say. She wants to be honest, even if it could create conflict. Having friends you care about opens you up to hurting and being hurt, but the rewards are immeasurable.

Witnessing a genuine exchange between two friends who love each other has a significant effect on Shuuko, who only tagged along because Yuuri asked her too and she had nothing else to do. What’s amazing about this first act is that this is the first time Shuuko is hanging out with people after school since she started high school. Far from fearing socializing is always this intense, she realizes what she’s been missing out on.

It’s the perfect environment for her to get something off her own chest: that she’s in love with Tanaka-sensei. Futaba’s utter shock at this confession serves as proof Yuuri never spilled the beans, which comforts Shuuko further. When Aya passes by and happens to spot Shuuko hanging out with friends—and enjoying it—it puts a spring in his step and a tune to hum. He’s happy for her, as are we.

One of Futaba’s best expressions yet: the “yeah I’m stalking you deal with it” look!

Yikes, I’ve only covered half the episode! That’s not to say the other half isn’t interesting, because it was, but it didn’t have quite the cathartic, warm-and-fuzzy power of the first. That could be because after running into Kou by chance, who is playing with the stray black cat, then says he won’t adopt it because “caring for things brings a lot of trouble” in the most obnoxious angsty way possible, Futaba decides to spend the rest of the night stalking him!

This is why I like to think Nozaki-kun wrote this manga. He truly understands girls’ hearts, and in shoujo, if you like a guy and stalk him, he’ll eventually like you too! I kid, I kid…sort of. But really, if he doesn’t want Futaba following him he could be more forceful about it, but he’s very wishy-washy about it, and by the end puts on the air of a protector by lecturing her on the risk of being assaulted by going out in the night alone, culminating in the closest they’ve come to a kiss.

Perhaps its because he was genuinely worried that Futaba would do that to try to get closer to him that he was cross with her. But at least Futaba isn’t just hiding in her head and actually trying to act on her feelings. As Shuuko so eloquently puts it, it’s ultimately up to Kou to decide between Futaba and Yuuri, or to reject them both. But if he has feelings for Futaba (and let’s face it, he does), then he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with toying with her much more.

Stray Observations:

• Komatsu Mikako is doing great understated work as Shuuko; her laugh sounds like the first laugh she’s laughed in years.
• Come to think of it, Uchida Maaya is also showing she can handle non-chuunibyou dialogue with the best of ’em.
• Aw, why not? Kudos to Kaji Yuki, while we’re at it. No one does sensitive/whiny angst like Yuki. This is Hope we’re talking about, after all.
• Steelers? C’mon, animators. Surely you can think of a better team to slap on Kou’s t-shirt.