Just Because has turned out to be a quite interesting show on-screen, which is a good thing.  Not so good is that it’s proved rather interesting off-screen as well, not necessarily for the right reasons.  Young studio Pine Jam is ambitious – certainly laudable – but the production schedule for Just Because is apparently a disaster already, a state of affairs for which first-time director Kobayashi Atsushi is blaming the studio and pretty much everyone else is blaming Atsushi.  Only three episodes in the over on-screen evidence of this is not egregious, but with 9 eps to go you have to fear for the worst.  And given how few series like this are produced these days and how encouraging it is to see a newer studio take a crack at it, that’s a real shame.

Our friends at the excellent Sakurabooru note Kobayashi-sensei’s ties to Production I.G., and suggest that he’s trying to do something broadly along the lines of Kyoto Animation with Just Because.  There may be truth in that, but to be honest the studio I see when I watch this show is P.A. Works.  Truthfully, I could hardly imagine a series more archetypically PAW  – or at least the PAW of 5 or 10 years ago – than Just Because.  It isn’t so much in the look (though there is some of that, too) but in the character animation and narrative style.  This is the sort of meandering, multi-character teen dramatic slice-of-life that was once that studio’s stock and trade, to the point where they almost seemed to have a patent on it.  I miss that P.A. Works – which is perhaps one reason behind my fondness for Just Because.

The title of this episode was “Andante” which, for those of you not familiar with classical music terminology, means a “walking pace” – measured, steady, no rush to get where you’re going.  That’s very much the bailiwick of Just Because, which while not exciting has an appealing ease to its gait.  It hasn’t reached and grabbed me by the throat with emotional engagement, but I do find myself getting caught up in its leisurely narrative.  It’s quite lifelike, for lack of a better term – somewhere halfway between a drama and a true slice of life, with a bit of romcom thrown in for flavor.

I do have worries, though, chief among them Komiya Ema.  I already find her annoying to the point of intolerable – every time she opens here mouth I just want her offscreen as quickly as possible.  That’s fine in the sense that she’s supposed to be annoying – Eita certainly finds her such – but Komiya has to be an endearing character in some sense if she’s going to become part of the drama.  That holds especially true if she’s going to become romantically linked to one of the boys (with Eita being by far the most unlikely candidate).

Much better is Inui Yoriko (Sakuraba Arisa), Hatsuki’s best friend who we’ve briefly met in each of the first two episodes.  I’m not sure where she fits into the equation apart from being Hatsuki’s best friend, but I like her – she’s expressive, funny, and obviously cares deeply for Hatsuki and her family.  She seems to have told Hatsuki something of consequence off-camera that we haven’t been clued in on yet, and she continues to fruitlessly try and get Hatsuki to acknowledge Haruto’s feelings for her.  I truly don’t believe Hatsuki is so clueless that she’s unaware of his intentions (I don’t know that anyone could be)  – I think she just feels overwhelmed with life and responsibilities, and doesn’t want to try and process what Haruto’s feelings could mean if she did acknowledge them.

So we basically know where Eita (likes Natsume), Natsume (likes Haruto), and Haruto (likes Hatsuki) stand.  We don’t know where Komiya and Yoriko do – indeed, whether they’re to have any standing in this geometry at all – but I suspect they’ll figure into it before it’s all said and done.  I do think we’ll have more overt romantic drama before things shake out, which is fine with me as long as Just Because doesn’t trade too heavily in cliche, but I find myself hoping the series doesn’t lose focus on the challenges for graduating high schoolers in letting go of innocent pastimes and confronting cold reality.  That remains the most distinctive part of the fabric of Just Because for me.