Karen's Anime Blog

This episode deals a lot with academic snobbery, and I’m actually really sensitive to that. I went to a really highly-ranked high school where a lot of the kids were overachievers who were planning to go on to Ivy League and Tier-1 schools. A lot of these kids thought they were destined to be the rulers of the universe because they could memorize information and regurgitate it back with great regularity. These kids knew everything, except the fact that they weren’t as smart as they thought they were, because NO ONE could possibly be as smart as they thought they were. Trauma? A little.

Scene: Chidori High School, AKA “Dead End School.” Rintarou is still rocking from the revelation that Kaoruko attends Kikyo Girls School, AKA “Posh Girls School.” His friend Shohei is whining about how the Kikyo girls have been glaring at him again, but Rintarou isn’t really listening. Rintarou’s friend Saku notices the bandage on Rintarou’s face, which is the injury he got from protecting Kaoruko last episode; Rintarou isn’t telling anyone how he got it. The boys are also curious why Rintarou closed the curtain, blocking the view to the other school, but he’s not telling them why he did that either. Talk to your friends, Rintarou!

“Where did you get that wound, Rintarou?”

“I tripped over a cake.”

Class starts, and I immediately feel sorry for the teacher. If the kids are saying things like Chidori is for “morons,” then the teachers have to deal with that bad reputation too. I’m sure a lot of the teachers at Chidori are perfectly fine teachers, they just likely don’t have the connections or luck to get into a better school. Based on the people I know who have taught high school in the US, it’s a pretty thankless job. Anyway, Rintarou muses that Kaoruko probably won’t come back to the the cake shop, and he figures it’s “for the best.” I think he is seriously underestimating how much Kaoruko likes cake.

Rintarou and the boys are about to go to karaoke, but there’s a commotion at the gate: A Kikyo girl is waiting outside Chidori High School. Naturally, it’s Kaoruko, and Rintarou makes an adorable shocked face when he sees her. Shohei starts getting into her face and being a moron, but to be fair to him, he was picked on by Kikyo girls earlier in the day, so his patience for seeing little pink-uniformed girls has been burned already. Still, he’s acting like a twit. Rintarou obviously isn’t going to tolerate that kind of behavior.

“Lay off this chick, she singlehandedly keeps the cake shop in business.”

Shohei cries that he wishes he had a girl who would wait for him by the gate, then some of Kaoruko’s associates– I hesitate to call them “friends”– see her waiting over on the Chidori side of the street and drag her out of there. As the boys walk off to karaoke, it finally occurs to Rintarou that Kaoruko might have been waiting for him, but he rejects that possibility. Rintarou’s kind of adorable.

At karaoke, Saku, who is more perceptive than Rintarou’s other friends, wants to know why Rintarou has been so out of it all day, and he knows that the bandage on Rintarou’s forehead didn’t come from “bumping into something.” Rintarou thinks long and hard and reasons that if he tells them about Kaoruko, they’ll all yell about how much Kikyo girls suck, and he doesn’t want to hear it. That’s probably the response he’d get from Shohei, but I think he’s underestimating his other two friends.

Back at Plain, the lights are still on, even though it’s past closing time. Turns out Kaoruko has been waiting for him for some time. She bows and apologizes for the incident at the gate, which wasn’t her fault, but I guess she feels responsible for not reading the room, so to speak. Rintarou’s mom offers Kaoruko some leftover cake, which Kaoruko says she doesn’t want, but then her growling stomach betrays her. I like to think Kaoruko has already eaten enough real food today but her stomach growls mightily if she doesn’t get a piece of layer cake once every few hours. Anyway, the two sit down and have a heart-to-heart. I bet Rintarou gets leftover cake so often he doesn’t even enjoy it anymore, I’m so jealous.

I’m going to take screenshots of all the delicious cake on this show. Totally gratuitous, unnecessary screenshots. It’s my blog, dammit.

They have a very nervous conversation, with Rintarou spitting out that he was happy to see her at the gate and then trying to walk it back. He tells her that he wasn’t expecting her to come to the cake shop anymore after she found out he was a Chidori student, and she looks crushed. She’s so distraught, she leaves without even finishing her slice of cake– and it was chocolate!

Rintarou’s mom is concerned about the miserable look on Rintarou’s face after Kaoruko leaves, and the two of them have some mother-son chat time. Rintarou says he doesn’t understand why Kaoruko wants to see him, and his mother literally thinks “Why is he so dumb? What did I do wrong?” Hah. I kind of wonder if this is what it would be like to be a parent to a boy.

“You may be eight feet tall but never forget who gave birth to you, kiddo. I made you and I can take you out.”

His mom points out that Rintarou is doing to Kaoruko exactly what everybody does to him: judging people by appearances. He’s assuming she must be snobby since she’s from Kikyo, even though she’s never acted that way with him. Rintarou, dense as he is, realizes that she’s right and punches himself in the face in penance. That’s some good parenting right there– well, not the punching part, but that’s not his mom’s fault.

Morning, Kikyo Girls’ School. Rintarou is waiting for Kaoruko at the gate, early before the other students get there. The two of them then have a contest to see who can apologize the most; Rintarou wins. The two decide they’re not going to worry about the nonsense with their schools, and while they don’t outright say “we’re going to be friends now,” it’s clear that’s on the agenda. The last bit of the episode features the two of them texting from inside their respective schools. Rintarou opens the curtain to see Kaoruko in the building across the way, and Kaoruko jumps for joy when she sees him. I wonder how many episodes it’s going to take for Rintarou to realize that she really likes him, you know, THAT way? I hope it’s before episode 12. It’ll be boring if I keep having to write “Rintarou’s mom looks at him and facepalms, wondering again how she raised such a gigantic moron.”

All he’s missing is the ring! Can’t wait for the wedding.