I’m still pretty convinced there’s more Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san anime in our future.  The first season sold decently, the manga continues to increase in sales, and a veritable empire of spinoff series has sprouted from the original.  There’s just no reason not to continue, which of course doesn’t necessarily guarantee we will – but I suspect once there’s a larger haul of unadapted chapters, we’ll be back for another season.

I wasted a lot of ink talking about this series over its 12 episodes, so no need really to rehash what I like about it (and what I don’t, so much).  But I think it’s worth reiterating a couple of things, first that this show shares a lot with it’s Shin-Ei Animation stablemate Tonari no Seki-kun, in that both do an exceptional job depicting the difference between boys and girls.  Especially at that certain age.  They go about it differently, but the main source of the humor for both series is that gaping chasm between the sexes in adolescence.  And that certain age is important, too, because especially with Takagi-san a big source of the charm is in how expertly it captures that moment between childhood and young adulthood.  13 is a turbulent age, to be sure.

Balance is the key to all this.  The balance this series displays when depicting first-year middle school romance, and between sweetness and vinegar when it comes to the titular teasing.  Takagi-san may tease with love, but if you’re Nishikata-kun the experience is often painful just the same.  I do think she crosses the line into genuine cruelty, sometimes, and I don’t think the series tries to pretend otherwise.  But I also don’t think the story would work in quite the same way if she didn’t.  It’s a bit of a conundrum, certainly for me as first a reader and then a viewer.  But in the end, I’ve always come back for more.

As for this OAV, it adapts the water park chapter from the manga.  Like most of Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san (including the OP) this is really a snapshot of life on Shodoshima, the mangaka Yamamoto Souichirou’s childhood home.  And it provides quite a primer on pubescent romance, as not only are the main couple featured but also Nakai-kun and Mano-san.  Nakai is the anti-Nishikata – always smiling, seemingly never perturbed.  In that sense he’s a sort of hero to Nishikata, but even Nakai admits that “it’s easier to go to the water park with a guy”.  He pretty artfully uses Nishikata to ditch Mano, in fact, a development that’s not unnoticed by Nishikata and Takagi.

This is the paradox of being a 13 year-old boy – you’re utterly fascinated with girls, but ultimately much more comfortable hanging around with guys.  It applies even to a bro with a girlfriend like Nakai-kun – what chance does Nishikata have?  Still, for the two of them (not surprisingly much more overtly for Takagi-san) this is a pretext to join up themselves, so as to give Mano and Nakai the alone time Mano desperately craves.  Naturally this includes a fair measure of teasing, but it feels almost gratuitous here because Nishikata is so unmade by the swimsuit he helped Takagi choose that it’s almost like he’s in self-teasing mode.

This is classic Karakai Jouzu, pretty much, right down to the extended cameo by the baka duo and Yukari.  It wouldn’t have felt remotely out of place as a canon episode in the TV run, which is perfectly fine as it’s smack in the middle of the manga timeline.  The utter lack of finality to the OAV does nothing to shake my confidence that it’s a bridge, not a finale – my bet is that these characters will be back on screen soon in one form or another.