Catch the other episode reviews here

Last episode, we put a cap on the summer jolly times with fireworks and a touching moment involving the whole family.

My Thoughts

So, just as I thought, it looks like we’re getting to the cultural festival stuff. Those hoping for more drama in this very happy rom-com with little drama will get their wish, just not in the way they expect. Shikimori and Izumi are pretty tight most of the time, so you’d be hard-pressed to really mess with their relationship much. No, it comes from an outside source here, but let’s wait and see. Well, I’ll wait. You’ll read the next paragraph or something.

The gang’s class is doing an animal cafe, and I can’t remember if it was mentioned last time because it’s been two weeks. Either way, it’s a pretty clever way to take the usual cosplay cafe that always seems to happen for cultural festivals. Because if you just want normal cute stuff, be a bunny, but if you want the more attractive cosplay stuff, be a bunny girl. It’s actually quite clever, and I feel like would get more people in besides the usual group, which is probably why they’re so damn busy. Just some shower thoughts.

Now, believe it or not, the drama doesn’t actually come from people dressed up like lions and bunnies. So you may remember the girl with the really cool blue hair from the volleyball match, Kamiya. Popular, well-liked? Yeah, she was the bit of foreshadowing I said I couldn’t remember if the anime added or if it was already in the manga. She’s basically the issue here.

Izumi knows her from the library committee, and it just so happens that he needs to work with her again this year, putting books away or something. I should know, considering I’ve volunteered at a library before, but I don’t. I also washed paintbrushes, which I feel like doesn’t fit in. So in between probably washing paintbrushes or whatever you do at a library, Izumi and Kamiya get to talking because even though they don’t see each other much, they are friends.

She takes a particular interest in Shikimori for some reason and wants Izumi to tell the story of how they started dating, which is good for us since we don’t actually know all that much about it yet. And, well, don’t think that will change anytime soon because we’re only learning about the day they became a thing, not how they met, which is still up in the air.

So their school does this thing where they give random students hearts with numbers on them. Whoever has your matching number is your soulmate after you find and take a picture with them. Marketing genius, actually. People would eat this thing up. Well, the year they started dating, Izumi and Shikimori got the same number, but reminding Izumi that god personally hates him, he loses that number, as well as his confidence to ask Shikimori out.

But where the story changes is that Shikimori doesn’t give up like Izumi thinks and instead pulls him out of his funk and starts to help look for his missing number. Well, they fail, but the push gives Izumi the confidence to stand up for himself and ask her out, and the rest is history. Really sweet, actually, and I appreciate that it’s not something grandiose. It’s literally just that she has something he doesn’t, which is often how these things go.

Kamiya really wanted to know this information, but we don’t really know why. We just assume it’s because she has a thing for Shikimori since she’s so interested in her. But the final reveal of the episode is that Kamiya has Izumi’s matching number this year, and Shikimori doesn’t like that. Well, she doesn’t know who has it, but she’s willing to murder to get that matching number, so that will be the main plot point of the next episode.

All and all, good episode. Fairly straightforward, not really doing much plot-altering stuff. That’s a good thing for most people, though, since that’s one of the bigger complaints about the series in general. It’s just kind of incoherent, but that’s largely early on, which is why things are getting better now. It took Shikimori a bit to fall into its own.

As of now, it doesn’t really seem like Kamiya is important, but she is. That little teaser at the end should show you that. But I’ll pretend not to know why for the sake of…I don’t know. Fun? Sure, for fun. Also, for fun, I’ll end it here because I’m writing this at like 3 AM, and I like fun. Sleep is fun.

Thank you very much for reading

Get some sleep, me.