The only downside of this show is my face hurts after every episode.
It’s almost impossible to overstate just much the Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san anime is improving on the manga experience. I know when I say that it sounds like a dig at the manga but it’s really not – I like it plenty (I’m still reading it after all). But the anime expands on its charms in such myriad and wonderful ways. The remarkable thing is, it does so even when adapting manga material (though the original stuff has been great). As I said before, in terms of pure maximizing of potential, this has to rank as one of the best manga adaptations in many, many years.
This stands out as a landmark episode to be certain. As to why, it’s a somewhat vexing matter of what would be considered a spoiler and what wouldn’t be. I feel pretty safe in saying this – we got our first direct allusion to the “Moto Takagi-san” manga spinoff (which I’m confident will be part of the upcoming movie) in this week’s pre-open. Just to be clear, though, despite some viewers freaking out about it being an anime shocker, this was a manga chapter (#73). Yamamoto did this himself – it’s just that it was an open question whether the anime would choose to do the same, given the implications.
With that bombshell out of the way, the episode proceeded in a more or less typical fashion – teasing chapter/trio chapter/relationship chapter – albeit with a bit more overall weightiness than usual. The “green peppers” bit (I like them but you know, they’re green because they’re underripe – that’s why red bell peppers are better) is a direct inversion of the cold-open, with the boy and girl back in their traditional roles. It’s a pretty standard teasing moment apart from that (and the way Takagi frames the outro), with Nishikata refusing to register the hints Takagi gives him and sinking himself through his assumptions.
The baka supporting cast was layered into the canon story much more intricately here with the whole culture fest sequence. Kimura wants a karaage cafe (I confess I’ve never heard of that as a school thing, either), but Yukari engineers a hijacking of the selection process to a class play, which the baka trio control in Putin-like fashion. Sanae is the author of “Romiya and Juilot” but Akari seems more inclined to use the whole thing as a setup for Takagi and Nishi to play the leads. her vicarious romantic fantasies being the paramount motivation in her existence.
It’s pretty funny the way Kimura’s heartbreak over fried chicken gets him cast as the lead, but once Takagi declared her contest it was a given Nishikata-kun was going to be aced out. For once it’s not Takagi trying to manoeuver him into relationship-advancing positions, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t hoping to seize the moment. Little does she know that Nishikata will unwittingly offer her the chance to get her score anyway – but that’s pretty much a cycle that plays out every time their romance levels up.
The fishing bit is just classic Karakai Jouzu all the way. As always the anime closes with the big gun, and that hug – while a spur of the moment thing – was certainly another watershed moment. The metaphor is hard to miss here – that big fish isn’t the only whopper someone is trying to reel in, but the difference is Takagi is using much stronger line than Nishikata was. “Koi” indeed – that and the “tsuki” (moon) thing are the cornerstones of the Japanese obsession with puns and romance. Both of them seemed pretty shaken up by this – clearly this was such a big step even Takagi-san wasn’t quite ready for it…
