Recap

Kaori wants to go to the beach, a plan Hase wholeheartedly endorses. Reluctantly, Shogo helps him coordinate the outing. As they spend more time together, Kaori and Hase start reconsidering the nature of their relationship, but wuss out when they have the perfect chance. We were not pleased.

Shout out to main bro of the year contender Shogo. This dude puts up with a lot of shit for Yuki, even more so in this episode than usual. I think soon enough he’s going to get more involved in getting Kaori and Yuki to fess up and be honest with each other. You can already see how much he understands where the relationship is in this episode. It’s almost like Shogo is a part of Yuki’s conscience, constantly pushing him forward. I’m not sure if he just pities his wimpy behavior, or simply wants to help out a friend, but he clearly wants to help him despite all his protests. I’d absolutely love to see him start to work with Saki. The two make a good duo, and they both obviously see what our main pair don’t.

It’s all the effort that gets put into this outing that makes the last act really hard to watch. It’s almost as if One Week Friends was intentionally playing on all the old shoujo tropes just to tease us on the romance. As Iro put, Yuki was basically given the greatest romantic setup of all time, and still wusses out on it. The two are so adorable together, it really is more annoying now to watch them go through the motions. At least we got to see a few new cute dresses on Kaori. Too many shows just have their main characters stick to their one outfit at all times that it’s nice to see a show that appreciates variety.

I’m not sure what has changed in me since I was younger. Back when I was a freshman(good lord, was that already 6 years ago?), I found Toradora. It was both the first subbed anime and the first romance anime I had ever watched. Through almost the entire series, I was completely enamored. I loved the ups and downs of the story, even if it kept mercilessly teasing romance, only to pull back at the last minute. A year later, and Kimi ni Todoke had the exact same effect on me. Nowadays, I find the old fashioned romantic buildup to be as much frustrating as it is endearing. It might just be the niggling thought that this show will not end on a satisfying note. I suppose that it’s not outside the possibility that there is an ending point ala the first season of KnT, one which doesn’t complete the romance, but ends it at a satisfying point. Unfortunately, that is a rare occurrence in the romance genre.

Still, this was still a really adorable episode. Despite our frustrations, there was an appreciable development in the relationship between our two leads. I am a bit confused to learn that Kaori was jealous last episode, the conversation he was having was hardly flirtatious, but it does at least seem to lean to the idea that she is coming to understand her feelings for Yuki. On the other side, it’s a bit annoying to see Yuki continue to flounder about being honest with himself. I suppose I could understand him not wanting to tell Saki, but if he’s going to do such a poor job of pretending he isn’t into her, he might as well fess up so he stops looking like an idiot. This game really knows how to play with our hearts, and I’ll expect more episodes like this as we start to focus closer and closer on the budding romance.