I’m not going to call last week’s episode of Tomo-chan a slump, because it was still damn good.  But I thought it was the weakest since the premiere, largely because it lost some of the authenticity that for me is the series’ hallmark.  It was really the first time the plot seemed to driving the characters, not the characters the plot.  That works fine for some shows but for this one, which treads so much on familiar ground, I think it loses something when things don’t naturally evolve from the character dynamics.

If indeed that was the case, Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko! was very much back in the sweet spot this week.  First off doing one of the things it does best, taking romcom anime tropes and making something fresh out of them.  This time around it’s the marathon, and naturally Tomo and Jun view it as a personal competition.  The girls are supposed to turn around before the boys (which I’ve always thought was pretty sexist, though I’m guessing most of them don’t complain).  But not for a second is Tomo going to be bothered about that (and why should she be, honestly –  it’s real competition she wants).

Adding a trope to the fire is the anime cold, which fells Tomo like a lumberjack’s axe right in the middle of the marathon (just after they blow past Kou-chan on their return trip just as he’s starting to feel manly).  This is apparently a result of her having run for several hours the night before and fallen asleep naked in the shower, which is a good reminder of just what a total doof she is.  It’s a bit of a dilemma for Jun, as there are no teachers or vehicles in the vicinity, so he puts her on his back and manages to win the marathon despite carrying Tomo all the way back to school.

Tomo (who dodged a bullet with those leeks) squeeing when she finds that out is truly adorable.  But no doubt the headliner here is Tomo returning Jun-kun’s handheld game – on the grounds that he’s finally proven he’s stronger than she is.  Tomo-chan has no idea of the symbolic importance that act holds for Jun of course, but it immediately sets him reassessing the nature of their relationship.  And thinking about how it got that way, which takes us into another flashback – this time to just before they started middle school (damn, Jun was an enormous 12 year-old), when he finally landed a blow on her at the dojo.  Her “it’s sad” reaction ties right into my allusion to the first time a boy beats his father at sports and how it reflects on this relationship.

Maybe I’m just incredibly dense, but I didn’t realize Junichirou used to literally think Tomo was a boy.  I mean, it does explain a lot – but I’d been thinking it was always more in the spiritual sense.  Now we basically know why Jun went on tilt and more or less boycotted Tomo for a year – this realization knocked him on his ass (especially as he considered that he probably knew all along and just didn’t want to admit it).  And we know why he asked Misuzu out, and why she accepted.  We’d already seen that extremely brief courtship from his perspective of course, but it was interesting and amusing to see it from hers.

Misuzu’s feelings remain very complicated and – I would argue – tangled.  She liked the idea of a guy asking her out, even if she didn’t like Jun specifically in a romantic sense.  Even this early she was concerned about Tomo and her alienation from female pursuits, but she also has feelings of very deep friendship at the very least for her.  Jun was useful in the machinations of her mind, but as we’ve seen Misuzu’s machinations often turn out differently than she intends them to, and mask her true motivation a lot of the time.

Jun, it seems, has finally decided to try and face his feelings for Tomo head-on – and acknowledged the possibility that just maybe she wants to as well.  When he finally apologized to her after a year (I normally disapprove of comic violence in romcoms but he had that coming), I think he really did just want to be pals like the old days.  But he’s matured enough now to realize that things can’t stay the same forever – and that he still wants to be with her forever.  That means figuring out a new context for that to happen, and while the answer is obvious and it’s hinted that Jun realizes what it is, I’m not quite ready to assume that yet.

A word or several before I wrap about the ED, which was a marvelous capper to a marvelous episode.  Switching it up to the guys’ perspective here was a genius move, especially with the tenor of the song and performance basically unchanged.  Sometimes a series just obviously has something extra about it, a creative spirit that seems always to be looking for ways to express itself, and Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko! is such a series.  If 2023 is to be the year of the romcom in anime (as very much seems to be the case) it’s Tomo-chan that’s gotten it off to a flying start.

ED Sequence