“Exchanging Letters”
What They Say:
Machida Sawako, nicknamed Miss Bernard, frequents the school library and always seems to have a book in her hands… but while she longs to be an avid reader, she finds reading to be too much work.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the promise of an episode without Sawako last time around that didn’t achieve it’s goal all that well, we’re back to the usual “fun” this time around as she’s back to her normal self. With this episode we get her trying to do the fun thing that a lot of writers do to try and expand what they’re capable of with exchanging letters. Unfortunately, Shiori is the object of her attempt and that just means nothing good will come of it since Sawako is nothing but superficiality and name dropping. You can see Shiori’s abject horror at the start of it even if she tries to play it off as a diary exchange kind of thing and you feel bad for Shiori because she treats it seriously even knowing who she’s dealing with.
In Summary:
Sawako proves herself to be just as problematic as she’s been all along and we get a decent chunk of the episode with Shiori basically laying out all the reasons why. While she does find a little bit good at the end about her it really does come back to the main point where there’s very little to like about Sawako and I find myself, and likely a lot of other viewers, mostly feeling like Shiori except for the wanting to be friends with such a toxic person.
Grade: D
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
