Well, that was intense.

I’m kind of unsure how I feel about that episode, to be honest.  It was really good, that’s not in question.  Nanba Hitoshi is a helluva director and he’s really the unsung hero of Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko.  In terms of execution this ep was one of the series’ best, and since the second they’ve all been really good indeed.  It was striking in every way – but something felt slightly off to me.  I don’t know where these chapters fit in the manga timeline, but this played like something that should have come later – or at the very least, as if a few shortcuts were taken on the character side in the rush to make all that happen.

The faultline amongst the main cast has always been apparent.  Misuzu and Carol on one side as manipulators who see through deception and use it as a tool, and Jun and Tomo as straight shooters who take things pretty much at face value.  As for Kousuke he’s kind of in the middle – but he’s been very slowly revealing hidden aspects of himself over the course of time.  That took a big lurch forward last week when he went into berserker mode, but he exploded into the forefront of the narrative here.

To extend that metaphor out another level, Misuzu and Carol project an image that’s very different from the person they actually are, while Tomo and Jun are (apparently) very much who they seem to be (though Jun is much more aware of some things that he lets on).  Misuzu plays the bad girl, the vixen, but she’s actually insecure and rather emotionally needy.  Carol plays at the literal dumb blonde (which is even more accented in Japan as the “clueless gaijin”), when she’s actually whip-smart and at least as good a manipulator as Misuzu.  She’s also putting up a false front in another way, as this episode makes clear in no uncertain terms.

And what of Kousuke?  He’s a pretty good actor too, as it turns out.  I think the “evil spirit” Tomo-papa refers to is just the reflex of a boy in love, but – largely because of his self-loathing – he hides his true feelings for and from Carol.  The entire bit about being interested in Tomo is a false front.  He says what he says to Jun before their match because he’s trying to goad Jun into taking him seriously (a mistake).  The whole song and dance about how he admires Tomo and wants to catch up to her is really about Carol, more or less.  Kou-chan likes and respects Tomo to be sure, but it’s Carol he’s really looking to captivate.

We see a bit of a dark side to both Misuzu and Carol this time, no question.  Both of them clearly see others as pieces on the board to be manipulated.  You can argue that the intentions are good – more so with Misuzu than Carol – but there’s a tremendous amount of arrogance on display here.  That stunt Carol pulls with Jun is really off the hook.  No, she was never going to do anything with him and to an extent, she was trying to push him into Tomo’s arms (which she succeeded quite spectacularly in doing) so as to eliminate her as competition for Kou.  But – even as she admits herself – there was an element of petty cruelty to it, too, venting her frustrations by toying rather viciously with Jun.

Poor Jun was in way over his head here, and while one might argue a little push towards maturity isn’t the worst idea, this was not the right way to go about it.  Misuzu, having gotten wind of what happened, takes this as an affront to her own self-perceived status as the Rasputin of the group and decides to manipulate events herself.  She goes through Kousuke to do it, but – not being satisfied that he’s the right clay to mold – decides to put Carol in a “vulnerable state” to move things along.  That ends up exploding in her face rather spectacularly, and she has to go running back to Kousuke to clean up her mess.

I think one reason all this bothers me a little is because both Carol and Misuzu screwed up big-time here, but everything works out fine and dandy as a result of their screw-ups.  In effect, they were rewarded for doing what they did, which feels a little out of whack.  As for the cousin romance thing, well… I can live without it but realistically, it’s not all that uncommon in the world at large so not really worth getting irritated about.  On the other hand, it was nice to see Carol’s vulnerable side reveal itself at last (though there were glimpses).  I’d say maybe she and Misuzu would learn their lesson from all this, but what lesson would that be given that they got exactly the outcome they were pushing for?