Recap

Konoha has had enough of watching Benio give Mashiro and Kobeni special treatment so she enlists the help of the newspaper club to dig up some dirt on them. As she finds herself more and more in contact with the two girls, it turns out she may be the one keeping secrets.

Jel’s Thoughts

I’ve noted in previous posts that I really have no desire to waste screen time on a Konoha sub plot. She’s been just barely tolerable in her ironic role as Benio’s stalker, and while there’s some humor to be had from the “outsider misunderstanding” angle we simply have more important things to focus on. Needless to say I was gritting my teeth through the bulk of this episode as it seemed that was exactly the path we were going down, burning precious animated minutes on a character that was irrelevant to the main plot. Even the addition of an amusing, somewhat adversarial Newspaper Club member – something handled much better in Engaged’s predecessor, Love Lab – could not get me interested in Konoha’s plight.

And then somehow, in the last 5 minutes, they changed my mind. Maybe more astute viewers figured it out sooner, but I was completely blindsided by the reveal of Konoha’s origins. I just figured her extreme reactions to being called a monster were just your typical anime comedy overacting, so the thought never even occurred to me. Konoha’s background in itself could come off as a cop out, but add in the fact that Hakuya seems to have caught her eye and we have a whole new angle to explore. The building theme of “It’s OK to love anyone” is really getting hammered home, particularly in Kobeni getting hung up on Hakuya’s dismissive attitude toward Konoha. Introducing a rival for Kobeni, especially one that is the same type of supernatural creature as Hakuya, is the perfect shot in the arm for the final third of the series.

There were a lot of other neat little details going on this episode too, like Nadeshiko setting up Konoha’s confrontation with Mashiro without either one of them noticing and the aforementioned crazy newspaper girl was amusing in her own right. So even during the first frustrating 18 minutes there were a few bright spots here and there. Overall I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed this episode, but I have to give it a begrudging slow clap of approval for how they managed to fool us. Now I’m looking forward to see if they can back it up next week.