Normies aren’t made; they’re born.
What They Say:
“Yu Ishigami Closes His Eyes, Part 2 / Kaguya Wants to Touch / Kaguya Doesn’t Say No”
In an effort to break out of his shell and become a normie, Ishigami decides to join the cheerleading squad for the school sports festival, but much to his dismay, the team is essentially the “Tribe of Yay!” While Ishigami feels hesitant, the team meeting intensifies fueled by enthusiasm and zeal, where it is decided that all the boys will dress up in girls’ school uniforms while cheering. However, Ishigami, who is a loner, can’t think of any female friends that would casually lend him a uniform. As he begins to consider quitting the team, Kaguya appears…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the last episode cooled down the absurdity a bit and let Miko join the story as more than the mechanism for a cameo-level running gag, her role since her highly emotional focal episode has still largely been to misinterpret situations she observes within the student council as inexcusably depraved. As she contemplates quitting the student council she was finally able to join after wishing for it for so long, her one true friend responds first with a simple reaction brilliantly drawn out by inserting the OP within it, and then acts as the voice of reason that someone with Miko’s overactive imagination needs to reexamine her experiences with a more practical outlook.
Her perspective was always treated as a comical exaggeration of the single frame of reality that conveniently portrays the most incriminating and least accurate perception of the situation at hand. It’s a contrived and overused trope, but the payoff comes from this spectacular sequence depicting just how far her imagination took the assumed misunderstandings and weaved a grand epic that frames Miko’s warped fantasy as a work that regularly shifts genres, formats, and eras, equally parts beat-up old 4:3 VHS of a 90s (or earlier) school drama and crisp, ambitious, letterboxed film presenting divine grace. It’s similar to the recent shoujo rendition of the series, but both more consistent with the actual style of the series and less consistent with itself from scene to scene. Miko’s mind is a fascinating writer, but not the finest director.
As her friend calmly talks her through how unlikely her assumptions actually are, casually dropping a reference to a defining moment in Miko’s otherwise heartbreaking middle school history, she begins to recall these scenarios in a different light… which is far less accurate to the reality at hand. In fact, some of her original assumptions were more correct than anyone as pragmatic as her friend would imagine, albeit full of embellishments. While her new vision is wildly misguided, at least it’s much more consistent, and as Miko accepts each new possibility as unquestionable truth in record time, her internal acceptance system becomes more and more disgusted. Suddenly Miko has become a decent director, but a much darker and more perverse writer, something that offends even herself.
That roller coaster was easily the strongest of the three main segments in this episode, which is nice to see since Miko hasn’t gotten as much love lately, but Kaguya follows up with reminder that she’ll always be one of the most enjoyable characters in any context. Her infatuation with Shirogane has reached a crippling extreme, so she needs a method to counter that, or else this series can’t sustain itself much longer! Hayasaka’s advice results in the gesture seen in the OP, a choice that calls back to her “How cute” expression and hilariously transforms blushing Kaguya into stone-faced Kaguya instantly. These extremes are almost as opposite as the latter and her arch-nemesis, Idiot Kaguya, but this dichotomy, as well as Hayasaka’s comment that it’s been a long time since we’ve been reminded that Kaguya is supposed to be a genius, drives home a central theme of Kaguya’s continued evolution throughout this season in particular. Maybe it’s not all positive in her mind, but it’s made her far more endearing.
After being cut from Miko’s internal story because of the disdain she shares with many others at his very existence, Ishigami gets to star in the final segment of the episode. He’s finally ready to try being a normie, but it becomes painfully obvious that this is not something a polar opposite like him can simply switch to at a moment’s notice. The juxtaposition between this pure introvert and a room of unbearable extroverts is a recipe for hilarity. They may be somewhat exaggerated, but having more or less been in Ishigami’s shoes, there are definitely people in high school who appear exactly like that from a perspective so dramatically different. This strangely turns into a need for him to cross-dress, which Kaguya shockingly assists him in with such acceptance that the reason is almost certainly that she doesn’t even see him as a male to concern herself over. There are some entertaining reactions from onlookers, but I appreciate that it hasn’t turned into a mockery of drag at this point. It’s only the setup for a continued story in the next episode, so what payoff they’re going for remains to be seen, but hopefully they can keep it respectful like anime rarely does.
In Summary:
Miko wins the episode with the most ridiculous retelling of current events, and then ramps it up to an even more bizarre extreme. However, Kaguya and Ishigami both offer excellent contributions in very different ways. The episode was also bursting at the seams with pop culture references, some of them unsurprising for anime, but others ranging from Peanuts to “Vogue” by Madonna.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Funimation
Review Equipment:
LG Electronics OLED65C7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick
