His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.
What They Say:
“Miyuki Shirogane Wants to Work / Kaguya Wants Him to Join In / Kaguya Wants to Control It”
Kashiwagi’s boyfriend goes back to Shirogane for more romantic advice while Kaguya eavesdrops again. Thanks to Shirogane’s advice the first time around, the boy has been dating Kashiwagi, but a month has passed and the two haven’t even held hands yet. To Kaguya, the question of what to do in order to hold hands is so simple that she’s disgusted by it, but for Shirogane, who doesn’t actually have any experience when it comes to romantic relationships, it’s a relief since he feels capable of addressing the problem. However, like the previous occasion, Shirogane’s advice seems to go in an unexpected direction…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Kashiwagi and her boyfriend have become the most frequently recurring topic of the series, and to date nearly the only notable characters outside of the student council and Hayasaka. They seem to be taking turns asking the protagonist of their respective gender for advice regarding their relationship. With Shirogane and Kaguya each having somehow helped them become a cute couple despite their own inexperience and biases, it seems that all should be well. But despite the article Kaguya read implying that Japanese high school girls are as sexually active as their American counterparts, this pair represents the overly innocent high school romance paradigm we often see in anime; after dating for a month, the prospect of holding hands still seems like a major hurdle to overcome. This plays into the first major piece of comedy for the episode, as Shirogane is worried that the level of advice that Kashiwagi’s boyfriend (who I don’t think even has his own name, even though he was introduced before her) would be seeking at this point must be far beyond his already extremely limited knowledge, but upon realizing that they’re on the same level – extra virgin, you could say (original joke; do not steal) – Shirogane is filled with relief and perhaps more confidence than is warranted.
Much of the story centers on Shirogane attempting to use the boy’s insecurities as an excuse to recruit him to help at his job, which has some amusing moments but feels a little unnatural given how unrelated the topics are, especially since it’s not as if it’s been a running gag for Shirogane’s character. Still, it deserves some credit for explosively intense visual metaphors, something this show is particularly adept at. However, the overall segment is still saved by the ringer of the series, Love Detective Chika. The reuse of that persona isn’t as effective as its initial implementation, but the quick switch to Chika’s uncharacteristic cynicism when faced with the kindergarten-level romantic dilemma proves to still be a reliable source of comedy gold.
Although the second part has Kaguya’s name in the title, most of it features Shirogane and Ishigami exclusively, and it’s safe to say the latter is the star of the show. Sometimes Ishigami’s dark thoughts are more transparently sourced, as is seen when his own cynicism (a more fitting trait for him) regarding school clubs is directly tied to his jealousy toward charismatic jocks with active love lives, his polar opposite. Ishigami’s despair is more hilarious than it ought to be considering how realistic his plight is, but once he switches gears to making jokes about the bodies of his female council members, he seals his own fate, and deserves every bit of it. I’m not a fan of these jokes or seeing female characters react so predictably to them, but in the context of Ishigami receiving punishment for his shallow shaming, there’s a degree of schadenfreude that justifies it. More importantly, Chika once again saves the entire vignette with a brilliant sequence of sheer joy from assembling a harisen with which to beat Ishigami. The final piece of the strangely varied sub-episode tied together by the club theme, the piece that its title actually refers to, is less memorable, but Chika continues to win the comedic appeal by trying so hard to whistle to nonchalantly play off her obvious self-serving requests, as well as the ultimate joke of Shirogane choosing to see himself in a harem lead role, which he is refreshingly still not whatsoever.
On the other hand, Chika gets to star in a purely comedy-driven final segment, and yet I found it to be easily the weakest of the bunch. The series itself acknowledges the juvenility of its “wiener” and “boob” jokes, but banks on the concept of Kaguya being so behind in her sexual education that she has only just now reached the level of an elementary school kid who finds the mere mention of these words hysterical. As was the case in the previous episode exploring her total lack of knowledge in this area, her naïveté carries the joke further than it would get if handled most other ways, but its repetition here doesn’t do it any favors. However, it’s not a total waste, because Ishigami’s misinterpretation of the situation manages to take the content in an unexpected direction just enough to hit a successfully funny punch line when it might not have worked without all that relatively weak setup.
In Summary:
Two of the three segments in this episode feature some of the best comedy the series has had, and although some of them also hit some duds in the process, the overall delivery is extremely successful, especially with lovingly over-the-top direction to drive home jokes that would be fairly simplistic in other hands.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
LG Electronics OLED65C7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick
