I have no hesitation is saying that I love this series.  It’s damn good of course, but it’s also a show I love in the affection sense – much the same way I do the likes of Miira no Kaikata and Nana Maru San Batsu.  When a series wins you over equally well both in the objective and subjective view, that’s love as far as I’m concerned.  I’m really beginning to understand why Runway de Waratte was nominated for all those awards, including the Manga Taisho itself.

It’s not often I use this word to describe an anime, but Runway is genuinely uplifting.  In fact I’m struggling to remember the last time – maybe Kabukibu!?  You get uplifting moments and uplifting episodes, sure, but in this event the entire series is uplifting.  It’s hopeful and idealistic and resolutely forward-thinking and progressive, and the two characters at its heart are impossible not to root for.  I can’t overstate this point – I absolutely don’t care one whit about fashion, even my own, much less women’s.  But this show makes me care about it for 22 minutes every week not just because the characters are so well-written, but because it communicates why fashion is so important to the people that do love it.

In that light, I want to call special attention to the character Niinuma Fumiyo (Suwa Ayaka) and the brilliant way she was used to frame this idea.  I suppose it’s occurred to me in an offhand way in the past at some point, but when fashion is presented as the domain of the physically elite – tall, perfectly proportioned, beautiful or handsome – it inherently sends a message than anyone else is not welcome.  Welcome to admire with envious eyes, sure, but not to participate.  These beautiful clothes aren’t for you, sorry.  But there is a Uniqlo just down the street.

In watching this episode and specifically Niinomiya-san, it struck me – what a great opportunity it would be for a new designer like Yanigada to make a statement, “I make beautiful dresses for short girls, too.”  Serendipity to be sure – but Chiyuki is the perfect ambassador for that notion, a lovely and talented youngster who just happens not to be an Amazon.  To see what seeing her on the runway meant to Niinomiya – that sense of inclusiveness and possibility – was a genuinely moving moment.  And not the only one in this episode, either.

Even more than last week, there was tremendous sports-anime like tension in the air here.  He may be a natural but Ikuto-kun is still a kid, and obviously he’s never worked under this kind of pressure before.  For someone like me who knows nothing of the subject, it was fascinating to watch his thought process play out as he faced the challenge of repurposing Chiyuki’s dress in 13 minutes using equipment he’d never used before.  Cut the hem?  No, she warned him – he’d never fix the fraying in time.  How to make the dress suit the model – her energy, her youth – but still fit her size.  It was an advantage for Ikuto, no doubt, that Chiyuki is built like a model in every sense but height.

In the end Ikuto cuts the hem after all, realizing he has no time to shorten the dress any other way, but his solution to the fraying problem is unique and ingenious to say the least.  He’s still going to run out of time though, until one of the veteran models (all of whom are getting swept up in Ikuto’s race against the clock) makes the suggestion to buy time by slowing down the music and going for elegance.  His “shapeshifting dress” is like nothing I’ve seen before (which admittedly isn’t much), but it proves an especially fortuitous design when one of the assistants supplies Chiyuki with a show with a broken heel.

In addition to everything else that’s uplifting about this episode, the idea that something can succeed by being different is a powerful one.  Everything doesn’t have to be done a certain way just because “that’s the way it’s done”.  A short but lovely model?  Why the hell not?  When Chiyuki can’t help but smile on the runway after her heel breaks and she realizes the whimsical genius of what Ikuto has done, that feels like an upraised middle finger to exclusivism and conformism – and it’s another genuinely moving moment in a series that’s hardly short of them even after only three episodes.