Recap

After having a frank talk with Kou, she resolves to rebuild her relationships from the ground up, including his. This is helped by the start of a new school year, where Futaba continues to bond with Yuuri. After some prodding by the elder Tanaka, she decides to be the class rep, and our main group finally gets established.

At last, Futaba realizes something we all understood in episode one. I’m glad that got cleared up pretty quickly. I suppose Tanaka sounds like a common enough name that she wouldn’t immediately recognize it, but it would have been kind of silly to drag on that misunderstanding much longer. It did serve for a couple funny jokes, and was a good catalyst for getting Futaba and Kou to spend some alone time and air their feelings.

I do like this explanation for why Kou initially stood Futaba up better than the initial one. It’s one of those combinations of bad moods and bad timing that really do happen in real life. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a child of divorce, but I can only imagine how stressful that can be. It seems that Kou wanted to spare Futaba getting involved in any of it. Considering he had to leave so quickly is really telling as to how quickly things escalated.  I do wonder what Youichi had to do with Kou’s current sour disposition. Is it simply that being with his brother reminds him of the bad times? It is a bit excessive that he goes out of his way to avoid spending time with him. I imagine that is one of those mysteries that will only get revealed when Futaba gets closer to him.

I’m surprised time is moving so quickly in this show. I’m not sure if I just was not paying attention to what part of the year it was, but it seems sudden that we’re already thrown into a new school year. It is a good opportunity to shove every major character into the same place, even if the idea of such a coincidence is a bit of an eye roller. Futaba’s attempts at changing Yuuri’s reputation are pretty adorable, and really help sell the new-found friendship these two share. It’s a bit of a testament to how logical her old mentality really was that, as soon as she stopped towing the line, she starts getting gossiped about.

Futaba has an adorable eagerness to the way she tackles things now that she’s stopped playing to people’s expectations. It’s clever to see Youichi quickly exploit that in order to plant the seed of becoming class rep. With what he knows about Kou, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was somewhat using her so that Kou would come along. Out of all the main group, Shuuko is the only one whose angle I can’t quite get in joining the planning committee. I suppose she may genuinely want to help with this, but something makes me wonder of she’s just using this as a way to get closer to a certain faculty member. With how fast this story’s been moving, I wonder if now is when it’ll pump the brakes a little bit as we get to know these new characters better. I can’t think of any better occasion to do that than forcing them all in the same building for a night.