“I Want to Connect, but I Can’t Be Forgiven”

Thursdays at 3:55 pm EST on Crunchyroll

Kazuki and Toi head to Sara’s meet and greet to carry out their plan.

Jel’s thoughts

This episode presented an interesting juxtaposition of Kazuki’s plausible family circumstances with the extraordinary lengths he has gone to in order to cope with them. Contrasting realistic problems and feelings with bizarre fantasy is Ikuhara 101, but in this case there’s not even much fantasy. They just straight up walk into an idol meet and greet and kidnap the star.

More importantly than that though, the big reveals this episode make Kazuki a more interesting character. You can sympathize with his feelings, particularly since he is a young kid dealing with complex circumstances that are not his fault. At the same time, you can’t ignore his sociopathic behavior. I felt bad when his secret is revealed to Haruka in the most devastating way possible, but also relieved that maybe now he will be forced to move past the incident haunting him.

Whether or not Kazuki turns out to be a flawed hero or sympathetic villain remains to be seen. He seems to have too much of a conscience to be truly “bad” per se and I think working with the other boys has had a positive influence on him. That said, not too sure how this latest turn of events is going to affect the poor boy. Is this rock bottom or can we go lower? I think we can go a little lower, but not much.

As for next episode, I’m assuming we’ll get more info on the Hot Cops as they seem to be up to something in the final scene this week. They are still the most mysterious and frankly least interesting part of the show. I’m hoping they’ll do something next week to feel more relevant.