“He Wants to Talk Privately…”
What They Say:
Shinozaki is an office worker who is taken care of and coddled by his senior team member Shiori Katase: a gorgeous, profoundly kind, loving, and diminutive woman.
Shinozaki certainly hopes that she’s not doing it out of duty… but her joy of doing so increasingly exposes her feelings!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a lot of good fun involving the fanservice the last time around, it was enjoyable in that kind of low-hanging-fruit way to get some saucy material. It helped that both Shiori and Shinozaki feel more fleshed out at this point than when they pushed this harder at the start of the series so it wasn’t quite so awful. Of course, time moves forward and we saw at the end of the previous episode that the two ended up pressed up close against each other in a small space while trying to avoid a bigger problem. That has all sorts of uncomfortable moments for both because it takes the fantasy into reality more than they expected at times and that gets some very warm cheeks. It’s cute and silly even if it is the kind of situation that most think they would play out different in their own lives.
The show takes us back a bit to show how they got into this situation as they’re looking for a product only to have two other coworkers show up there and not knowing that Shiori and Shinozaki are there. And they have quite the cute little rendezvous, which they’re pretty blunt about in terms of cuteness and dialogue which really sends out two leads into a panic, hence ending up in the locker. The pair at least devise a plan to get the other two out of there so they can escape, but it involves Shinozaki pressing into Shiori to get her phone out of her back pocket, where it’s very tightly wedged in there. It’s just as comical as you’d expect while also playing up the sexual tension, especially with all the blushing, and it’s awkward in some beautifully fun fanservice-oriented ways. While their escape is managed, the way it impacts them for longer than that is just delightful and honest in some ways.
With both tired the next day, we get Shinozaki asking to talk to her later in the day in a way that feels serious and that has her mind coming up with all kinds of things. The problem is that while there’s some hope for it, she also learns that the other two that were fooling around got caught and one of them was reassigned, which tempers things going too much further since it could cause real problems. There’s some fun at-work office talk among the women that goes in amusing directions when preferences come up, and seeing Hayakawa blush as much as she does is great. The supporting cast continues to make the show for me, but this far in and I’ll admit the leading couple is finally starting to grow on me more. While the end conversation turns out to not be much, what we do get is a post-credits magical girl sequence and that alone makes the episode worthwhile.
In Summary:
While the show doesn’t go much further than it has before, it does make it clear there are some risks to be had here, though they’re fairly limited in context to events itself. It’s a fun setup that we get here that puts our two leads in a tight space and while it does get a bit on the fanservice side of things, it never goes too far. But it does enough to make it fun and saucy in its own way and it’s just enjoyable to watch these two get involved in these dumb situations. I wanted more of what we had with the break room sequence and the way the women were talking with each other as that’s a whole lot of fun. At least we get a magical girl moment with Hayakawa toward the end that puts her in that world even briefly.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
