When your younger siblings start to grow up, it can be harder than you’d imagine.
What They Say:
Shun’s younger brother Fuyuki and his girlfriend Mamiya-san kissed. When Shun finds out, he asks his friends what he should do as Fuyuki’s older brother. Fuyuki ignores his brother and goes on a date with Mamiya. The gang decides to follow the couple on their date and end up at a karaoke box.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we’ve had a few episodes that have dealt with the twins in a few ways and Chizuru had a very good episode last time around with Mary, the show turns its focus towards Shun this week, which is welcome since he hasn’t had much involvement for awhile. Shun’s a fun character even if he is the most girlish of the group because that tends to add a different kind of fun to what goes on. He’s so connected to how he feels that it can frustrate others or over excite them, but there’s a certain honesty about him that’s very appealing. He wears his emotions on his sleeve so it’s only natural that when something happens to his younger brother, he takes it pretty personally.
Discovering that his brother, Fuyuki, that we haven’t seen for awhile has no gone and started kissing his girlfriend, it’s sending Shun into a bit of a panic. The others understand it to some degree, but they’re also not taking it quite so personally or hard. Because of how Shun is though, it doesn’t take much for them all to help out by following them since he’s so worried about where it could lead for them. He’s just convinced they’re too young to be doing anything like dating, never mind kissing, and he wants to watch over them to make sure it doesn’t go too far. It’s rather cute how their date goes as you watch it since it’s pretty normal and nice, but that’s about the extent of it.
The show does try to go a bit further in a way as the two spend time together and it gets a little more serious in that kind of shy way that’s cute since discussion about sex or intimacy is hard for even the majority of adults to deal with. Playing out that encounter in parallel to the gang being in the next karaoke room over and getting into that is rather cute since they visualize things in various ways. Especially when things suddenly get quiet next door. When things boil over, through some misunderstandings on everyone’s part, you have to laugh at how it unfolds but also enjoy that there is some tenderness to it. The way things can go like this does make for some smiles and laughs, especially when Chizuru makes it all worse, but mostly it’s just the kind of mildly memorable first encounter with a girl that doesn’t go quite right. But it was also good to see things from his girlfriends perspective to with how she reacts and deals with it alone and with him later.
In Summary:
While the show initially feels like it’s going to be all about Fuyuki and Mamiya, it actually works well by dealing with them as a couple and the gang of five as well without feeling like one is weighted over the other. Each of the stories told works well here as the guys are involved in helping out Shun, even though they think Fuyuki is fine and perfectly capable of dealing with things. But you have to help out a friend to ease his mind and worries. Things go a little silly towards the end but it’s all kept pretty real world and it leaves you smiling on all counts and really liking not only Fuyuki but also Mamiya a whole lot. I’d love to see more of their story as it goes on as well as the gang of five.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
