An episode like this one is a really good illustration of why writing about seasonal anime can be a lot harder than you’d think.  It’s not easy to encapsulate why this episode was as delightful as it was – any attempt to describe it, really, would make it sound like a trifle.  And indeed I was thinking it was a pleasing throwaway myself for the first several minutes, but its charms just kept exponentially expanding as the ep progressed.  That’s fairly on-point for Wotakoi as a whole, but never quite so much as this week.

The A-part was in fact pretty lightweight, straight-up meta-humor.  But it was exceptionally well-done, and this is a sub-genre that’s becoming pretty well-trod ground at this point – every other series seems to want to show us RL characters inside a MMORPG.  Several things amused me here, starting with Tarou and Hanako getting into a fight inside the game, even as the greed-driven Narumi was about to be toasted by a dragon.  Also, Nao taking over Hirotaka’s high-level character (note: he’s the strongest of the group by far, despite “not really liking” MMORPGs) and almost getting him killed before his brother takes over and takes care of business with typical alacrity.

The whole B-part sequence, though, was where Wotakoi reached the heights of comic genius for me this week.  Observational humor is what this series is best at, and it has a keen sense of both office and gender politics that serves it well in this sort of situation.  Tarou takes Hirotaka and two other kouhai out for drinks at the izakaya (in Japan, the sempai always pays), so Hanako and Narumi decide to have dinner together for a girl’s night out.  I think one can get a pretty good sense of where things are headed, but they sure don’t disappoint.

There’s great stuff going on at both places, and the fact that we’re treated to equal measures of each conversation is one big reason why Wotakoi is as good as it is.  This is a series that’s equally interested in spinning a modern romance from the perspective of both the female and the male, and that’s pretty rare in anime.  On the boys’ side things start out interestingly enough, with the two kouhai silently thinking about Tarou’s scary face and how they could never talk about it, when Hirotaka (who pretty much never has an unspoken thought) blurts it right out.  But it’s when the conversation turns to the subject of Narumi and Hana that things start to get complicated.

Meanwhile, Hanako and Narumi are bonding over an anime Naru recommended – until the subject of pairings comes up.  It seems these two are fated to never agree when it comes to yaoi, except that they both love it.  And that includes fantasies involving their boyfriends, with each arguing that their boyfriend should be the seme.  It’s a bit disturbing to hear Narumi say that despite her argument that the hotter guy should be the bottom, Hiro’s face “isn’t her type” – it does lend some credence to the idea that she might not be that physically into him.  But overall this is just straight hilarity.  I especially loved the bit where Hana brags about reading 18+ BL in front of Tarou just to mess with him (note that he’s reading his soft-core lolicon stuff at the time).

Hirotaka continues to stand out as the most centered member of the group, despite his relatively anti-social lifestyle.  While Tarou gets quite pissed to hear the two younger guys talking about Hanako (the relationships are not general knowledge around the office), when the subject is Narumi Hiro is perfectly fine with it – in fact he loves it when the guys speak reverently of her having a boyfriend.  Heck, Tarou is more annoyed to hear the Narumi talk than Hiro is.  The cherry op top of all this is that Nao has overheard the ladies’ conversation over dinner – and totally misinterpreted it.  And while Hirotaka immediately knows what the real subject was, he’s still not remotely bothered by it.  This guy’s got a certain type of GAR to him, and it’s quite different from any we’ve seen before.

While it continues to be a little frustrating to see Hirotaka and Narumi’s relationship seeming to progress no further than when they were in middle school, they’re still a blast to watch (as are Tarou and Hanako).  Even if Naru and Hiro are effectively nothing more than friends, they’re endearing ones – and that friendship is highly entertaining to watch play out on screen.