I wouldn’t necessarily describe this as a down episode for Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii, but it was sort of a quiet one.  Compared to previous weeks the conflict felt a bit manufactured, and it doesn’t seem to have advanced any of the major relationship or character arcs meaningfully.  Fortunately Wotakoi has an easygoing charm to it that makes time-wasting kind of entertaining, so that even a minor episode like this one still fundamentally works.

In many ways, I think Hirotaka has emerged as the core character in Wotakoi.  He’s really the litmus paper, the experiment to see if a hard-core otaku can function successfully in modern Japanese society without trying to hide what they are.  He confides to Narumi after she notices his pierced ears that he once thought acting like an adult would make him an adult faster.  The implication of course is that he figured out that was bullshit (which certainly seems to be the case).  Now he can say, truthfully and without a hint of self-importance, “I want to stay a kid forever”.  That Hirotaka says this as a high-functioning adult with a decent job which he does well and a girlfriend is a bit of a rejection of the accepted otaku mythology which pervades anime.

The manufactured conflict I referred to earlier comes courtesy of Hirotaka’s little brother Naoya, who works as a barista at the Starbooks that Narumi visits to try whatever ridiculous new frappucino they’re hawking.  I’ve yet to see a show that could actually get better by adding Kaji Yuuki (who sadly seems to be in more series than ever these days), and Wotakoi is no exception – Kaji is his usual no-range take you out of the moment self, but in the big picture it’s not so bad I suppose.  The character he’s playing is supposed to be annoying anyways…

Thanks to Tarou and Hanako being present at the cafe when Naoya recognizes Narumi and they start to bond, we get a bit of tension.  Tarou freaks out, not knowing Naoya’s true identity, but it’s Hanako who goes and tells Hirotaka he should swing by.  Eventually Naoya invites himself to stay over at Hirotaka’s apartment and it ends up being another gaming sleepover.  Tarou freaks out again, suspicious that Naoya’s intimacy with Narumi is a bit of a subversive come-on, but Hirotaka knows them both well enough to not give an actual damn.  He just wants Naoya to die already so he can solo and defeat Narumi and Tarou on his own.

I don’t see any smoke to this Narumi-Naoya thing, much less fire, but it’s fun seeing the other four hang out again.  The chemistry in this group is very natural, and Hirotaka especially is consistently amusing.  All that means we don’t really need a lot of story to keep things grooving, but Wotakoi is more interesting when the relationship element is explored more deeply than it was this week.  Hopefully we’ll see a return to that sooner rather than later.