A couple of weeks ago – having no idea of the specifics of this OVA’s content – I tweeted the following:

I really like Tonikaku Cawaii. A very bittersweet and charming take on an established relationship. I really only have one gripe, which is that at their (his, at least) age they should be having a glorious time banging each other’s brains out non-stop. And every time I see an argument posited for why they haven’t it just strikes me as absurd.

Prescient?  Certainly.  And this OVA does nothing if not strengthen those impressions.  It hasn’t been gone that long but slipping back into Tonikawa is so easy, because this couple is so winning.  Nasa and Tsukasa have wonderful chemistry together, and they’re strong characters individually.  Sure Tsukasa is a bit of a too-perfect dream girl in a sense, but there are obviously plot reasons for that.  And she has enough quirks and insecurities to keep it from being a problem.

At first one might even question why this episode is an OVA in the first place.  It was released as “Episode 13” and it feels very much of and part of the main narrative – to a point.  This could easily have been any episode of the original 12 for most of its length, but it eventually takes a bit of a turn.  And soon it’s clear that this is quite a bit more blunt about that topic I mentioned, though not so much as as to be realistic about it.  Things get quite sweaty there in fact, which is only shocking because the original series was so chaste most of the time.

Kaname in fact is the only one of the cast who really owns this question.  Setting aside what it says about her that she has a sexy daikon as her wallpaper, Kaname is the only character who’s really open about sex.  Even if she probably doesn’t exactly understand it yet – in fact she later makes it clear that she’s desperate to catch a glimpse of Tsukasa and Nasa in the act.  And good on her, I say – she’s a horny teenager who’s not pretending to be something else.  Unlike, say, the protagonist.

The premise for all this is that Nasa has gotten Tsukasa a smartphone, and once he’s set it up and showed her how to use it (her comment about how things were in the Sengoku period gets a strange lack of reaction) Tsukasa happily starts trading contact info (Darling first of course) and playing around with LINE (which is even more ubiquitous here than Facebook is in the States).  Nasa gets called in by his old job for an all-nighter to bail them out of some sort of I.T. nightmare and Tsukasa grapples with her first night apart from her husband.  She also grapples with whether to send him a “lonely” sticker, and worries about his own lack of communication back.

It’s when Nasa arrives home at 4:00 A.M. that things really heat up.  Tsukasa has laid out his futon, and – unable to sleep without him – is awake to greet Nasa in perfect bride fashion.  And her anxiety over things has made her considerably more forward than usual.  Nasa may be dead tied when he walks in the door, but this is a case of Red Bull for him.  By Tonikawa standards things get positively hentai, though for a married couple in their late teens (one of them at least) it’s still quite tame.  In fact (no matter what Kaname hopes) it’s pretty clear that while the two of them had fun, they didn’t have fun.  And what I want to know is, why the hell not?

Again, this is really the only fly in the ointment for me in what’s an otherwise charming and entertaining romance.  I’m sorry, but there’s absolutely no reason why these two shouldn’t be consummating their relationship and as I noted, any argument to the contrary (and I’ve heard a few) just strikes me as absurd.  Kids Nasa’s age should be in physical relationships anyway (and it’s getting rarer in Japan) but come on, they’re married.  We know they both think about it.  We know they’re attracted to each other.  They’re together constantly, and sleep two feet apart.  What the hell?  I love that in Tonikaku Cawaii we have a series about an actual married couple, and a wonderful one at that.  It just lacks this one important element of realism.

At least we get some acknowledgement of reality here, however tame – but then, it’s never been in doubt that Nasa is aware of the elephant in his pants the room.  Maybe this is something that will be addressed later in the series – which of course begs the question of whether we’re going to get a second season.  It doesn’t seem impossible – the manga is decently popular, and the anime hasn’t made even the slightest nod towards having any sort of ending or resolution.  If this is it, well – at least we got something of a nod to reality.  But I prefer to think positively when there’s a reason to, so I’ll keep hoping there’s more Tonikawa – and one of anime’s most winning married couples – in our future.