Karen's Anime Blog

We start with a flashback to Sakuta’s middle school days. It’s just after Kaede’s bout with Puberty Syndrome started, and his teacher wouldn’t believe Sakuta that the phenomenon was real. A girl asked Ikumi to deal with the situation, and we learn that Ikumi was likely the class rep during Sakuta’s final year in middle school. That explains why she stands out in Sakuta’s memories so much, at least in part.

Flash forward to today, we see Ikumi looking at a flyer for a middle school reunion event. I would not go to a middle school reunion if you paid me…well, no, let’s be fair. I would go if you paid me maybe a million dollars, but not for much less. Credits!

Yokohama City University, computer lab. Sakuta is talking to the guy who invited him to the matchmaking party last night, Fukuyama, and Fukuyama wants to know why Sakuta doesn’t get along with Kamisato. Saki Kamisato is the girl who showed up late for the party, and the reason Sakuta had a bone to pick with Kunimi last episode. I totally forgot that Kunimi had a girlfriend, shame on me. Fukuyama jets off only to leave Sakuta with Saki herself; this is going to be awkward. Saki said she was invited just to balance out the numbers on the girls’ side, and I reiterate my complaint from last week: why invite people who are already dating to a matchmaking party? The fact that they had two committed people there just to “even the numbers” shows the numbers didn’t need to be even in the first place.

It turns out Saki is there with an ulterior motive; she brought Ikumi with her. The scene switches to Ikumi and Sakuta chatting outside. Ikumi gives Sakuta the flier to the middle school event, which Sakuta has no desire to go to. Ironically, since he’s dating superstar Mai Sakurajima, he has exactly the kind of status-type thing to brag about at these stupid events that people want, but he’s not dating her for that reason. Before Ikumi leaves, he warns Ikumi to be careful with her hero-of-justice nonsense; sometimes, when you try to change the future, something worse may happen. Sakuta knows that first hand from his experiences in Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl, although I’m unsure on how much of that he actually remembers. Even after Ikumi says she’ll be careful, he still thinks she doesn’t know what she’s messing with.

Cram school: Sakuta walks in to see Futaba tutoring the tall basketball player that Kunimi mentioned last episode. I can’t tell if he has a crush on Futaba or if he just can’t focus on the material. *watches again* yeah it’s a crush.

In his own class, Sakuta asks if his students have any experience with #Dreaming, and one girl says that she dreamed she would win a volleyball match with a final ace, and then she did. The other student says that she only scored the point because she practiced a lot, and “Don’t believe in the occult, believe in yourself!” That…would be excellent advice in most contexts, but not on this show. Not ever on this show.

Himeji drops in, and I think she’s the girl who got the teacher in trouble last episode, but to be honest there are so many female characters with similar designs on this show that it’s hard to be sure. She ends up sharing an elevator with Sakuta, and I’m really disliking where I see this going. Himeji drops something, and the two of them knock heads when they both try to pick it up– Oww. I did that with my Dad once, it really hurt. Himeji skates off, but I’m watching her.

“Hi, do you have any committed relationships I can ruin?”

Scene shift to Sakuta’s apartment, and a bunch of the girls are there: It’s Uzuki, Nodoka, Mai and Kaede for curry night. I’m actually a little surprised because I thought Kaede was living with her and Sakuta’s mother now, but it appears she still lives in an apartment with Sakuta. Waiting for more info there. Sakuta is concerned that Uzuki shouldn’t be hanging out at his apartment while she’s in such a crucial phase of her career, but she’s not stressing it. More importantly, the curry looks delicious:

I could have given you a picture of all the pretty girls, but instead, you get this curry pic. Those are big chunky vegetables!

Uzuki gives Sakuta tickets to Sweet Bullet’s next concert at the university, and I have to say: for a band that supposedly isn’t that successful, they sure have a lot of gigs. After Nodoka and Uzuki leave, Sakuta checks out a letter from Shoko Makinohara, and talking about Shoko leads Sakuta and Mai to chat about the past.

Mai wants to know if Sakuta has forgiven Ikumi for the fact that she did nothing to help him during middle school when everyone thought he was crazy for believing in Puberty Syndrome, but he doesn’t have anything against her. In an interesting twist, the pair note that if Ikumi is acting like a Hero of Justice, they’re acting like the supervillains trying to get in her way. Inspired by that, Sakuta makes a post to the #Dreaming tag using a fake event, and I’m not sure how to feel about this. I understand that Ikumi is messing with forces beyond her control, but just straight up trolling her doesn’t seem like it’s going to have the outcome they want.

Sakuta: “I want Ikumi to stop this superhero business.”

Mai: “Have you considered annoying the shit out of her?”

Sakuta: “It’s on my to-do list.”

November 6th. It’s the Sweet Bullet concert at the college festival. Sakuta, Mai and Kaede are all in attendance. The host asks for the girls to do an encore and they looked shocked, like they had never considered that this might be a possibility before. After the show, Mai and Sakuta go backstage and the Sweet Bullet girls give them a list of treats they want the couple to pick up from the festival. I like that Mai is down-to-earth enough that she’ll play fetch for other people. Of course, they get a few treats for themselves, including a taco, and I’m wondering if this is the first time I’ve seen a taco in anime. You expect to see takoyaki and chocolate bananas at a festival, but a taco? Interesting.

Drama at the taco booth when Saki and her fellow nursing students are the ones running the booth, conveniently in nurse costumes like Ikumi’s from last week. Saki sees Sakuta and immediately goes into a superb Resting Bitch Face. Ikumi comes by to help, but she has a broken arm, so the other students tell her they can handle it without her. Apparently Ikumi broke her arm trying to help someone on the stairs at the train station, so she’s getting in over her head.

Mai gives Sakuta permission to go talk to Ikumi, so he finds her sitting off to the side near a small pond. Mai looks at him as he walks away from her, and I’m beginning to think Mai is secretly not as okay with Sakuta always talking to all these different girls as she pretends.

With Ikumi, she brings up what Sakuta wrote in their middle school yearbook: “Someday, I’d like to reach kindness.” Interesting thought for a teenaged boy. After chatting some more about her superhero hobby, Ikumi gets up to go to her next #Dreaming event, only for Sakuta to tell her it’s a fake; that’s the fake post he wrote when he was sitting with Mai. To her credit, she’s much less annoyed at this than I would be in her situation. She tells him not to do it again, then falls over in a sudden pain: it’s Puberty Syndrome, a physical manifestation this time. Some weird bulge comes out of her back under her uniform, her hair blows backwards in no wind, and a gash opens on her leg. I want Touko Kirishima to show up again in her Santa suit and explain why she’s giving out Puberty Syndrome again.

A fun episode, even though I sense developments on the horizon with Himeji that I’m probably not going to like.