One day, your prince will come, riding upon a bull. …a bull?
What They Say:
Eight Issue: “The Prince (Girl) of the School’s Problems”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Kashima feels that she’s being ignored by Hori, so she asks her friend Mikoshiba for advice. He tells her to work on being more appealing. Hori, on the other hand, speaks to Nozaki and Chiyo…about how annoying Kashima is being of late. This is not likely to go in the right direction for our princely girl.
The misunderstandings pile on (of course) as Kashima discovers that Hori is reading Nozaki’s comic While a high school boy reading shoujo manga is not necessarily that strange (though not entirely normal either), the deep attention which he’s apparently giving it (as Hori has made extensive notes in the volume as a guide for his assistant work) surprises her quite a bit. She then buys a copy of it to read herself, but wonders what others think. Sadly for her, it’s highly unlikely she will be able to guess the truth, as everyone she knows is in on the work in the wrong way. First, she asks Mikorin about it, being surprised that he knows of “Let’s Fall in Love” too and at the same level of detail as Hori.
The one-line summary of the story, however, put in Mikoshiba’s mouth is all the original manga author (of this series) pouring forth a little good-natured venom about the whole genre: “A mediocre girl falls for a popular guy and wins him over through sheer willpower.” Kashima being who she is, can’t understand that you’re supposed to sympathize with the weak protagonist Mamiko. Her next boy to interrogate is, again, the wrong person to ask for an opinion: Nozaki. His views on the manga (his own work, after all) are…different from a normal reaction.
The upshot is that Kashima completely mistakes what’s going on and thinks Hori wants to play Princess to her Prince. That’s not what he wants…
In the Part B of this episode, Chiyo, Hori, and Wakamatsu do some assistant work. Working on backgrounds mainly. The problem is that Nozaki’s notes of guidance are vague, bordering on near useless. Example from a scene of his manuscript: “Whatever.” We learn that he managed to get through the debut process (a manga author does not just suddenly get picked up for regular publication; there are a number of “new artist” and “rising newcomer” awards that make the independent “debut” possible) by avoiding the issue of backgrounds…by not using them or fudging them. So, “Let’s Fall in Love” has become dependent on Hori to manage the backgrounds all by himself, as Nozaki, Chiyo, and Wakamatsu have no talent for drawing them.
When Nozaki is forced to do a background by Hori for an exterior scene, it goes laughable wrong as Suzuki is floating about a foot off the ground. Nozaki’s solution is to put Suzuki on top of a box. It appears his characters constantly stand on boxes, which are plentiful in his world. Looks like overtime for Hori. That means he is tired the next day (and it doesn’t help that Kashima’s misunderstanding of Hori’s feelings has resulted in what amounts to psychological harassment by Kashima, though that’s not her intention) and almost falls asleep during Drama Club rehearsals. In his half-slumbering state, he explodes when he sees Kashima standing on a box. It ends poorly for him, however, as he gets himself knocked out cold. The denouement is that Kashima carries him to the Nurse’s Office, but since her first idea of doing a Princess Carry is vetoed by the other Drama Club members, she instead decides to carry him as if she were a horse. Except…she puts on a bull head mask by mistake. Off to the rodeo.
While all the romantic pairings are fixed at this point, the show does a good job of making these weird pairings (Hori and Kashima, like all the others, are a truly odd couple) work. Because this is comedy, we don’t really have to invest a great deal of thought about how realistic these matches are, we just need to laugh at the weird juxtaposition of personalities. And on that level, all of them have worked very well so far. Kashima’s misunderstandings of Hori’s feelings are funny because they are so exaggerated. It seems very few of the characters are in touch with anything we would call reality, besides perhaps Hori, who is the most grounded character (Chiyo is very grounded as well, but her role as Audience Guide, through which we were introduced to all of these oddballs, including Nozaki himself despite his seemingly mundane manner, requires a certain level of common sense) in the show.
If anything, the only thing I feel has been missing a little bit has been Chiyo, who has taken a backseat to an extent, now that all of the major characters have been introduced. She appears mainly to continue her own storyline of unrequited and unrecognized love for Nozaki, who is about as dense as bedrock. That’s okay, so long as the comedy continues to zip along as it has for the entire run of this series so far.
In Summary:
Kashima wonders why Hori is not treating her nicely. Hori is pondering why Kashima is being so damn annoying of late. The two are more star-crossed than Romeo and Juliet, especially since Kashima thinks Hori wants to be the Princess (he doesn’t). It all ends with a rodeo as we learn something about drawing backgrounds along the way. The comedy continues to work for this show and that’s all we need.
Episode Grade: A-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
