“Will You Accept? Or Won’t You?”
Sundays at 12:30 pm EST on Crunchyroll
Ito convinces Yamada and Miyamura to help obtain a club budget from the Student Council. Unfortunately the Student Council President has his own agenda and will only grant their request if they can get Shiraishi to change a major life decision.
Jel’s thoughts
I love that we are introducing actual antagonists into the mix, complete with the amazingly cheesy villain music during the conversation with Ushio and Odagiri. Granted, the Evil All Powerful Student Council is not exactly a new concept, but having an enemy group is a surprisingly rare twist to a comedy like this. It kind of reminded me of the appearance of the Newspaper Club in Glorio favorite Love Lab in that they aren’t exactly openly hostile, but it gives a sense of purpose to what would normally be an aimless Gag Scenario of the Week.
There were a couple things that bugged me in this episode though, particularly Yamada-kun’s splashes of fan service. The jokes and solid writing overall make the occasional underwear shots feel more out of place then they normally would. I want to just go up to the writer and say, “no, it’s OK, you have a good show here, you don’t have to do this.” I also didn’t like how Miyamura was forcing himself on Yamada in Shiraishi’s body, which just sets off all kinds of consent alarms in my head. I guess the girls generally seem comfortable with it, but it still bothers me that it keeps happening in every episode. Again, this show is better than that.
I was also a little uncomfortable with the group’s goal this week. Shiraishi should be able to decide whether she wants to go to college or not on her own. It was weird to see the show overlook or even kind of condone everyone pressuring her for their own selfish reasons. I suppose in the end it appears she really did want to go, at least I hope she did and didn’t just cave in because of her growing attachment to Yamada. All’s well that ends well I guess, and the final scene with Yamada was pretty adorable. Unlike a lot of “opposites attract” stories, they have some good chemistry going. Maybe having to kiss all the time helps speed things along? Between this and My Love Story!! we’ve got some good romantic potential this season. I’ll keep my defibrillator handy in case I need to revive Marlin.
The Glorio Blog 
I am reading the manga, and I can say your thoughts echo mine. The story and characters are so well developed, that the “fanservice” feels quite out of place and in my opinion is an absence that would significantly enhance my enjoyment of it. That and I think generally speaking, feminism has yet to truly reach Japan seeing as it ranks 104 in global gender equality in 2014.
As always, anime seems to be two steps forward and two steps back (sometimes three) with female empowerment. At least the good seems to be outweighing the bad here, but it’s sad we have to put an asterisk on what could be a really great series.