The final touches on completing the main group make for some serious moments we haven’t seen in a while. But ultimately, the “comedy” part of “romantic comedy” is never forgotten.
What They Say:
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The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ai’s “arc” of sorts that we’ve been following for the past few episodes has certainly not been a favorite part of this series for me. It feels like the earlier ideas that made this series a little special in small ways were largely forgotten in favor of standard harem material once we had gotten enough girls to fill the quota, and really there’s been quite a lot of silly material that doesn’t really amount to anything. That’s not unacceptable or anything; the series has almost always been a comedy on some level and, in a story like that, some good humor can sometimes be exactly what’s needed. However, I was ready to see this arc wrap up, partly because I didn’t see much potential in continuing things as they were going, and partly because the obvious plot points they’ve been teasing for the past few episodes make it pretty annoying to keep watching the characters (particularly Eita) not connect the dots that are so clearly being laid out.
This episode begins with some more of the kind of stuff we saw in the last few episodes: Ai does something stupid to make it completely obvious that she’s ridiculously obsessed with Eita, but he doesn’t imagine that could be the case at all, even when her attempts to cover it up make it even more obvious, and then she basically just comes out and says it. This series makes it a little more difficult than some to tell when the male lead is actually being dense rather than just denying the love that he acknowledges that these girls hold for him. At some points in this episode, Eita has conversations specifically about various girls being in love with him, but he doesn’t really react any differently. I suppose that’s in line with his original mindset that love is a distraction he shouldn’t pay any attention to, but with the way the story has been focusing on such generic harem clichés, it seems like he’s simply been overly dense for the most part lately.
Later in the episode, it becomes clear that Ai’s arc is ready to wrap up, and that means things should get a little more serious. This entire scene is perhaps even more predictable than any of the more comedic ones we’ve been seeing, but it’s still nice to see it all finally play out. Things soon return back to comedy, though, so the real emotional material doesn’t necessarily last for too long.
The final part of the episode goes just as expected as well, and it finally completes the main group as both a harem and a club, as it’s been clear would happen from basically the very beginning. This leaves about enough time for one more main story, so I hope they make it good. The next episode preview indicates that maybe things won’t be moving in a particularly interesting direction just yet.
In Summary:
This was based on a light novel, but watching this adaptation, it wouldn’t be any more surprising to learn it was based on a visual novel of the same genre. Because of this format, the final episode of this arc features Ai almost exclusively among the female cast, and then returns to the rest for a brief epilogue. It’s nice to see the payoff of everything that’s been teased over the past few episodes, but it’s still very predictable and doesn’t stay serious for very long. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the serious parts of this arc aren’t much better anyway.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Custom-Built PC, 27” 1080p HDTV.