Recap: Kyousuke’s housewarming party falls apart as the girls start to argue over who will cook and clean for him while he’s away from home. Kirino ends the debate by appointing Ayase as his caretaker for the next month while he studies.

Jel’s Thoughts: And with this episode, Oreimo’s descent into pure wish fulfillment is complete. It’s one thing to have a bunch of girls fighting for the main character’s affection, that’s the core principal of harem anime. It’s another to be fighting over who gets to do his household chores. I’m going to save my more vitriolic ranting about that for after the show wraps up, for now I’m just going to talk about what happened this week. I found last week’s Girl by Girl format convenient for organizing my thoughts so I’m going to give that another try, but before that a quick programming note: It appears there will be one more episode next week to end the TV broadcast, and then the final 3 part conclusion will air August 17th. You can check out the details over at Crunchyroll. As for coverage here at the Glorio Blog, we will save our Final Impressions of the series for after the finale in August. With that out of the way, let’s finish cleaning this mess of an episode up:

Kirino: Her stock is on the rise after getting to put her foot down as Queen of the Harem and silence everyone’s cat fighting. Her choice of Ayase as the least threatening pick and Kyousuke looking forward to getting her to do whatever he wants after the test are only bringing the siblings closer together. In an effort to make her a more sympathetic figure they try and throw in the bit with calling a truce with Manami, but I’m still not buying it.

Manami: If I make a Monogatari series reference, Manami kind of reminds me of Hanekawa – the seemingly polite, sweet, and innocent girl who is secretly pulling all the strings in the background. The big difference is her passive-aggressive fangs are pretty ineffective, particularly this week where she practically gets ignored, and “pulling the strings” has been simply talking to Ayase and Kanako about Kyousuke. It kind of feels like they are trying to make her out as the villain in that regard, but I can’t tell if that’s intentional or just poor writing. Probably both.

Kuroneko: At this point Ayase has pretty much gotten as much screen time as Kyousuke’s girlfriend, real or implied, as Kuroneko. Any weight or payoff to their adorable little affair has been completely lost. It was pretty pathetic to watch her begging in for attention like all the other haremettes, especially since once again SHE broke up with HIM. I cannot emphasize this point enough because it’s a pivotal hole in the show’s logic. She should have just cut ties when she moved away.

Kanako: Pretty bold moves from Kanako here, I have to admit my respect went up for her as she stood her ground against the other girls and never really denied that she’s after Kyousuke. I also found it funny (i.e. “dumb” or “stupid”) Ayase and Kirino called Kyousuke a lolicon for talking to her even though they are the same age. The issue with Kanako continues to be the fact that she adds nothing to the story, and that didn’t change this episode.

Saori: NOOOO Saori, you were my last hope! I’m not entirely surprised she joined in the fight, neither am I entirely certain she was serious. But you can’t deny it actually happened, and either way her thought process of “I’m hot and I’m rich so I might as well start acting like it” just came off as lazy rather than some fourth wall breaking wink and nudge to the audience. She did at least deliver the only good moment of this episode when she walked in and Ayase’s jaw dropped to the floor. Guess it’s rough no longer being the hottest girl in the room, huh?

Hinata: I was joking around the Glorio chat last week that they might as well have Kuroneko’s sister show up at Kyousuke’s door, and lo and behold look what happened. At least she doesn’t seem to be in love with him, not yet anyway…

Ayase: I almost, almost felt bad for Ayase this week as her experience doing Kyousuke’s housework was borderline degrading. It’s hard to ignore that he did also throw out a few misleading signs like yelling “MARRY ME AYASE-TAN!” when you consider the end result of their time together. I’ve already talked about how her entire arc has been completely unnecessary and putting her in the position of the doting, subservient little waifu only cements my case this is strictly happening to pander to the audience. The confession was not entirely unexpected, but it’s hard to feel any emotional attachment to a relationship that barely started 2 episodes ago. And honestly we all knew he wasn’t going to end up with Ayase, so really this was just a tremendous waste of time. The question now is who is the other girl Kyousuke is in love with? Is it still Kuroneko or someone else? I really don’t care at this point, but next week’s episode title might be a hint. Let’s just get this over with.