Recap: A semester has passed since Summer vacation and Rikka has been acting uncomfortable around Yuuta since the night they returned. With the school festival looming, Nibutani wants the club to be responsible and participate, but that will require helping Rikka sort out her feelings first.

Jel’s Thoughts: First let’s get the HNNNGGG factor out of the way: if you didn’t already think Rikka was super adorable up to this point (I actually haven’t), she’s pretty hard to resist this episode. I nearly had a heart attack during the scene when she tries to ask Kumin for help, and her attempts to follow or even understand Nibutani’s terrible shoujo manga suggestions were all painfully cute.

Speaking of Nibutani, she’s gotten a bit more interesting as she becomes more invested in the club. I’m still not totally sure how altruistic her motives are. Is she really interested in helping Rikka sort out her feelings for Yuuta or is it all part of her plan to turn the club around as Isshiki suggests? I imagine it’s a bit of both. I’ve heard some people compare her to Toradora’s Ami Kawishima and I think that fits to a certain extent. They both have similar split personalities and are a lot more perceptive than the rest of the cast, although the fact that Nibutani ends up pulling her romantic advice from manga shows she’s not nearly as insightful.

Those manga scenes, while amusing, do highlight one of the main criticisms of Chuunibyou. If you’ve been reading our coverage, Zigg has been pretty tough on the show’s lack of balance between serious and silly. While I don’t think it’s a major deal-breaking issue, I can’t deny there’s a few little things that seem a bit awkward. Sometimes it’s a minor thing, like the choice of music during Touka’s (awesome) scene this week. It was kind of distracting hearing a plinky, happy little tune in the background of a fairly serious conversation.

Then we get bigger issues, like the catalyst for this episode’s final scene. Seeing Nibutani’s manga ideas fail was funny and appropriate. I mean, of course they don’t work, they’re pulled from manga! But then to see the dumbest idea of all, putting their lives in danger, actually pan out was just kind of… weird. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel when Rikka was dangling from the roof, was it supposed to be a gag or were we supposed to take that scene 100% serious? Ultimately everything worked out and do I like how Yuuta really tried to have an honest heart to heart conversation with Rikka about why she was acting so uncomfortable. His steady influence, like in the hilarious ambush scene where he refuses to fight, always gets the show back on track. So despite any occasional hiccups in the tone, I still think overall Chuunibyou is doing a great job telling this odd little love story.

Zigg’s Thoughts: After basically sitting uneasily between humour and drama for the last few episodes, Chuunibyou‘s latest transformation is much more palatable – it’s become a romantic comedy. Granted, it’s still a romantic comedy with elements of crazed delusion, but they’re noticeably toned back as well. The result is something of a double edged sword – this is an episode which feels a little more generic than some of the stuff we’ve seen up to now, but it’s also charming and adorable and though it’s basically a bunch of cliches smashed together, KyoAni’s execution of them is so elegant that it’s difficult not to bask in the warm glow coming off the screen.

Perhaps the best bit of all of this is that we finally get something I’ve been wanting since the show took its dramatic turn – Rikka’s actual personality breaking out from her deluded shell.  Granted, for most of the first half of this episode she’s still totally balls-out crazy, but the second half sees her in a much more vulnerable, human light. There’s a fair old bit of the ‘super embarrassed anime girl’ trope at work but it’s also extremely cute regardless, and quite an important character moment.  As Nibutani points out, Rikka can’t reconcile her (genuine) feelings for Yuuta with the (fake) character she is in her head, which results in adorable confusion for the most part, but also some actual character development. For the first time Rikka has an incentive to be a real person as opposed to a wild fantasy, an interesting development for the character, and her exasperated reaction to Nibutani’s teasing is for once pretty blunt and human.

Nibutani also gets some redemption in this episode, given she’s played the role of superbitch for the past few. Her matchmaking plan is a story as old as anime itself, but again is saved by elegant execution and excellent character writing, and we get an amusing glimpse into her personal life when it’s revealed she’s still into Feng Shui and fortune telling, things which are DEFINITELY not lingering remnants of chuunibyou thank you very much.  I like that she confronts Rikka with her suspicions straight away and gets right down to matchmaking the two, although her use of the hilariously cliched shoujo romance guide suggests she’s probably not as knowledgeable about the ways of the heart herself as she projects to be. Again, ‘put people in dumb situations so they’ll spontaneously confess’ is not a cutting edge plotline, but there’s enough natural chemistry in the cast to make it funny and enjoyable. Dekomori also gets a nice little vignette in this episode, as she’s shown happily helping a classmate with her work in between her normal abrasive in-character self. It’s just the barest suggestion that unlike Rikka, she’s not alone in school and can maybe turn down her fantasies enough to be a functional, social student as well.

KyoAni continue to produce a fabulous looking show, not only in the obvious facets but also in the smaller but equally important details. This episode wouldn’t work without amazing character art and the animators and voice actors take care to capture the little tics and nuances of their characters to breath that much more life into them. There’s tons of lovely little touches as well, like the butterflies surrounding Rikka and Nibutani’s conversation which form into a heart at the crucial moment or the way Yuuta catching Rikka deliberately echoes their meeting from the first episode. By taking this tack, Chuuni has lost a little originality but gained in quality immensely. Now the only trick is whether you can unite comedy, drama and romance into a coherent whole in the time we have left.