Wow things were moving FAST this episode! (Also thank god, they toned down on the shoujo filters this week!)
First off, I’ve never been happier to see potential drama be thrown out the window as quickly as this one– and I hope it stays that way! After the way the episode ended last week, and the entire episode of Hisui seemingly being totally locked in to Koki, I feared things might get rocky. But amazingly, things didn’t get dragged out– which is absolutely awesome. It makes me really hopeful that there’s a trend forming where healthy communications is valued much higher than petty dramas and insufferable love triangles.
I’m really thankful that Kagawa Mio called Sae out on her feelings, and was able to give her the push she needed to speak to Hisui about it. It just goes to show how sometimes just being upfront about something sooner than later can help avoid a potential mess down the line. But it helps that Hisui wasn’t that serious about Koki to begin with, as she was mostly swooning over his visuals. Not to mention, the moment she had learned Koki likes someone else she began looking elsewhere.
However while Sae is understandably freaking out about this revelation, at this it’s plainly obvious that she’s the one Koki likes. After-all, he had worked very hard to pass the entrance exams, and he had just barely passed! And if that doesn’t scream: He wanted to be in the same school as her, I don’t know what will. That guy was LOCKED IN for the exams.
And notably, ever since they’ve started high-school, Koki has also been extremely proactive, being the the one to approach Sae when she has been too shy to approach him. We can also clearly see he’s the one trying to bring back the normalcy to their relationship they’ve shared together back in elementary in hopes to lead to something more. There were a handful of moments throughout this episode where he has stepped up in order to not miss opportunities of spending time together. I think among them all, my favourite was his shrewd idea to shut the class up by rigging rock-paper-scissors between them when they were being salty over the fact Koki’s and Sae’s groups were teaming up again. That was so sly!
We also saw how he’s protect of her, from catching her skirt had gotten torn after she had saved Hisui from the fall and giving her his coat to cover it, and having zero tolerate towards any slander against her. The best example of that is against their classmate Yushin, who is incredibly obnoxious and already on multiple accounts in this episode alone has said really rude things about Sae. Naturally, Koki wasn’t having any of it. The first instance was saving her from a nickname that she hated by suggesting the one he already knew she was comfortable with. The second instance was when he sent Yushin flying down the hill when they were picking up trash. Whatever the guy had said, it made Koki snap. (Admittedly that not the smartest response since Yushin could’ve gotten seriously hurt, but alas the dude didn’t and didn’t seem to care about it afterwards). Heck he was so upset about it, Koki even fell back into their old habits of calling her by her first name! (Which was absolutely adorable because he was a blushing mess yet again when he realized what he had done!)
Needless to say, it did make Sae very happy to hear her name called by him again.
And another thing we got out of this episode, was getting a glimpse of the sides of Koki she’s not familiar with. We saw him being a lot tougher this episode, from his mannerism and tone towards his guy friends, all while proving to be especially soft towards Sae.
Speaking of Sae, there’s a glaring issue has that’s been highlighted in both this week’s and last week’s episode. And that’s her problem of being essentially a doormat when it comes to standing up for herself. We already know she has a lot of insecurity over her height and it bothers her a lot when she’s the center of attention because of it. But sitting there and just accepting the insults people are saying to her is not okay. This is something she’s going to need to work on, because she needs to learn to just flat out tell people when she doesn’t like or disagrees or knows is not true. She needs to channel the same courage she had found when she spoke up on Koki’s behalf when Mio and Hisui got a bad impression from him. She could also learn about standing her own ground like the way Mio does when she didn’t want to be referred to a nickname. But I have hope for her as she already took a bit step forward in finding the courage to be up-front with Hisui about having feelings for Koki (thanks Mio for that push!) And now thanks to that, now Hisui’s on the same page, and wants to help her make progress with that! SO GOOD JOB! A small step int he right direction!
Speaking of Sae’s new friends, for the reasons above, Mio is undoubtedly going to be a great influence for learning to stand up for herself when needed. I also strongly suspect she’s already aware that Koki has feelings towards Sae. I mean, he’s not really that discreet about it either.
As for Hisui, she’s going to be an interesting one. She started off as a bit of the oddity of the trio, as neither Sae nor Mio are really used to or into ‘girl talk’ so to speak, so it goes right over their heads (not to mention Sae was doing her best to hide her feelings so didn’t feel comfortable to discuss it in the classroom). It’s something Hisui’s very passionate about, so she was quite flustered and at a loss when they revealed they weren’t really into it. But to Mio’s credit, she did try to find something to bridge them with, such a romantic poetry, which was pretty funny. That being said, now that Hisui’s on the same page about Sae’s feelings towards Koki, she’s very happy to see that Sae can do ‘girl talk’ and is eager to help her. Fortunately, Hisui wasn’t really ‘crushing’ on Koki so to speak, it was more being into his looks and not to mention, turns out she’s actually leaning towards someone else! Well that works out great!
Needless to say, it will be interesting to see how Hisui reads Koki’s feelings towards Sae. I do agree with her assessment that it does seem like Koki’ intro about ‘being shy around new people’ sounded like bullshit. Frankly we haven’t really seen him be shy around anyone.
Next week a school trip! It’ll be fun to see how things will unfold then now that both Mio and Hisui know about Sae’s feelings!
