Loving Yamada at Lv999 – 06 – A Weird Dance

This week dives deeper into Runa’s whole deal. Because she was raised and doted upon like a princess by her parents and brother, she comes off as haughty and hard to approach at school, even if she’s looking for connections. She also dislikes unfamiliar things and people, which is why Akane joining their guild was such a shock.

That said, as someone a little more grown up than her middle school classmates, Runa has come to like hanging out with the older Akane, essentially regarding her as the big sister she never had. When she sees her classmates doing a funny dance they found online, she can’t join them, but she is comfortable dancing with Akane.

Momo isn’t quite sure about the appeal of hanging out with a “runaway” middle schooler, and when Runa tries to give her attitude, she swats her right down with a frightening aura that will brook no insolence. When Akane suggests a super-bored Momo watch her play FOS, Akane’s laptop suddenly shuts down and starts smoking.

When Eita informs Yamada of the situation, he allows Runa to take him to Akanes to take a look at the laptop (he offers no promises of successfully fixing it). Akane is delighted he’s come, but knows from Eita that he’s generally awkward around women, so she does her best not to come on too strong while still being a welcoming host and friend.

When Runa snaps a cute picture of Akane and Yamada together and sends it to her brother, Eita suggests Runa do something to help them close the distance. Unfortunately, all Runa has are the most cliched anime scenarios: lucky perv, toast-in-mouth collision, walking-in-on-the-bath.

When it’s clear no one is bathing and Akane eats the toast shoved in her mouth, Runa resorts to shoving Akane into Yamada a bit too hard. When Akane gets up to scold Runa, her hair flies everywhere—including into Yamada’s eye. Akane gets up really close to Yamada and pushes his hair back to inspect his eye.

In doing so, Akane is following her usual code of being helpful and caring, while forgetting not to do anything to make Yamada uncomfortable. He excuses himself to return to his house to get some tools, but both Akane and Runa thought it felt like he was escaping the situation.

Just like hanging out with Runa means dealing with her princess act and being able to see through her sourpuss, pursuing any kind of relationship with Yamada means always being cognizant that he just isn’t super comfortable around girls. At the same time, he clearly cares for Akane, but just doesn’t have the experience interacting with women who aren’t Runa.

If he and Akane are to progress as friends or something more, it will take time and caution—like hunting for the hundreds of VIT or INT shards needed to synthesize a single gem.

Loving Yamada at Lv999 – 05 – Let Me In

Sasaki Runa starts out this episode as pure scum, standing up Akane so she can have her tutor Yamada all to herself. Yamada is aware of the scheduling conflict, and even gives the little brat a chance to redeem herself, but she insists she’s not standing Akane up; she merely had someone go in her place.

That “someone” happens to be one of Rurihime (i.e. Eita’s) online superfans, who is obsessed with Rurihime and assumes Akane is Rurihime. At no point whatsoever does this creep bother to listen to what Akane is saying to him. When she flees to the ladies’ room, he follows her in and tries to open the door to her stall. Like what the actual fuck?!

When Yamada tells Eita that Runa used his Rurihime account to prank Akane—and put her in potentially legitimate danger—Eita is not happy with his little sister. Eita texts Kamota saying Akane has been kidnapped—maybe a bit too far—so he can give him, Yamada, and Runa a ride to the meeting spot, where Akane is just barely tolerating the creep’s continued presence.

Akane is wearing a bandage on her shin from knocking against the toilet when the creep barged in on her.  When she spots Runa, Runa runs away, and when Akane gets up to chase her she hurts her leg again. But instead of continuing to run, to her credit, Runa turns back and runs towards Akane, getting down on her knees to ensure she’s okay.

Akane has all the guys fuck off so the two of them can have some space and time. And Runa does admit to ditching her and apologizes for being so shitty. Akane can tell she’s super protective of her friends, but makes clear she isn’t trying to take them away. She simply wants to become part of their circle, if Runa will have her.

Later, when having coffee with Yamada, Akane tells him she may stink at romance, but she’s pretty good at making friends with other girls, even tough nuts like Runa. Akane’s capacity for patience, empathy and forgiveness was on full display this week, thus endearing her to me further. If Yamada were to eventually get a damn clue, he’d be lucky to have someone as caring as her as a girlfriend.

Loving Yamada at Lv999 – 04 – Bouncing Back

Akane assumes the cute girl who looks like the online Rurihime is Rurihime, but she’s actually Runa, the little sister of Eita, who is the real Rurihime. This comes as a slight shock to Akane, but Eita is in firm opposition of the derogatory nekama label. As for Runa, she hates Akane’s guts, likely because she’s somehow insinuated herself into Yamada’s good graces.

For his part, Yamada doesn’t consider himself the property of Runa nor anyone else, but is never anything more or less than Yamada Akito. While not the most verbose or charismatic fellow, when for instance Akane drops her water glass while he’s staring at her, he blocks her hand from touching the broken shards, rightfully telling her to leave it to the café staff.

The gesture is so unexpected and oddly tender that Akane averts her face from everyone, lest they see how suddenly red it’s gone with embarrassment. Yamada excuses himself “to make a call”, but Eita finds him outside just messing around on his phone. Turns out Yamada interpreted Akane’s reaction to touching her as revulsion and made himself scarce.

Through Eita we learn that Yamada’s indifference towards girls is starting to worry him. That leads us into Yamada’s memory of a girl who was being bullied, asking him if he was the one who did it. It’s clear he has some past baggage that causes him to act the way he does. Perhaps he hurt this girl, and vowed never to hurt another by transforming himself?

Whatever the case, the remainder of the in-person event passes without incident—unless you count Runa staring absolute daggers at Akane as she interacts with Yamada and Eita. She doesn’t like this interloper, and vows to expel her from the guild with her own hands.

Yamada joins Akane on the subway ride home on her suggestion, and while she has trouble maintaining a conversation with him, she notices that every other girl on the train is staring at him, and then stares at her when Yamada does another kind thing for her—switching places to a more comfortable spot.

When talk turns to dinner and Yamada says he’ll probably just eat pudding, Akane has him wait on a park bench for ten minutes while she runs home, packs him some curry and frozen rice, and bolts back to him. Whatever feelings she may be developing for Yamada, Akane currently considers him a valued friend and fellow gamer and guild member, and a high school kid needs to eat properly.

Akane’s generous gesture is interrupted by a call to her from Runa of all people. She apologizes to Akane for being rude and hopes that they can hang out on Saturday and start over. Akane is obviously over the moon to hear this, while it seems clear enough to both me and Yamada that something’s up. Yamada confirms this when he sees a calendar alert for tutoring Runa on his phone—on the same day Runa is meeting Akane.

Will Runa stand her up? Try to execute some cockamamie scheme to get Yamada and/or Eita to turn against her? The mind staggers at the possibilities, but I don’t know how successful she’ll be. After all, it’s becoming clear that Yamada isn’t bothered by Akane’s sudden presence in her life, and is even relieved that she’s feeling better after how depressed she was when they met.