After last week’s literal flight of fancy it’s back to school this week on Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou, with an episode that was light on (though not bereft of) magic and heavy on angst.  Those have tended to be the more mundane face of the series in both senses of the term, but this series does possess a strikingly keen eye for human psychology.  A lot of the things I see happen on Youkai Apato – at school, at work – are things I’ve seen happen in real life.  Time and geography notwithstanding, human beings tend to fall into patterns and this series is very good at calling them out.

We’ve certainly seen this issue of phones in school crop up in anime before, and it’s not some made-up thing – they’re officially banned at every school in Japan, as far as I know.  But of course that kind of think isn’t always going to be enforceable, and Chiaki-sensei (who’s emerged as the most fascinating character on the “RL” side of the equation) is the sort of teacher who’s likely to look the other way as long as no one abuses the privilege.  That’s all well and good until someone does abuse the privilege – and one of the students, Nishiyama-kun, does so in the most egregious way possible.

This was an interesting drama to watch play out, as Chiaki shows his dark side for what amounts to the first time.  It’s really the students’ reaction to it that drives the story – some see this change as a betrayal, while others (like Yuushi) rush to defend him.  Looking at this from Chiaki’s perspective I can totally see why he’s pissed off – no one comes out of this looking worse than he does, as he was in violation of policy by allowing phones in the first place.  Eventually this all builds to a school assembly (which the residents of Kotobuki-so are somehow able to watch on what I can only assume is a youkai TV spirit) and the real fireworks begin.

And thing that’s totally consistent with the school eps of Youkai Apato is that Aoki-sensei really pisses me off.  Man, she’s the worst – nosy, self-righteous, and possessed of incredibly poor judgement.  No question Chiaki is playing the long game here with his “slam the door in their face” gambit – but he does seem to be genuinely losing the room until Yuushi intervenes by using Fool to cause a distraction, thereby giving the class president Kamiya-san a chance to intervene.  Things calm down as the two of them “negotiate” a settlement (which both knew was a dance – and interestingly, seems to offer no punishment for the actual cheater), but Chiaki-sensei has made enemies of Aoki’s harem (and not just them, probably).  There’s definitely more to this guy than we’ve been shown so far, I’m sure of it – but we’re running out of episodes to find out just what that is.