I don’t know if I can take eight more weeks of this.  These two, seriously, they’re just too much for me.  But there’s so much more greatness to come, we’ve literally just taken our baby steps into the incredible panorama that is Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu.  I have no idea what’s going to happen after this season – maybe the anime will give it the Takagi-san treatment.  But if it’s one and done, that will really gut me.  We’re in for an unbelievable ride this season, but I want to see all of it animated – it would be a criminal shame for any of Norio-sensei’s genius not to come to the screen.

It would literally be hard to overstate how much I love this pairing, but with BokuYaba it’s kind of a ladder of greatness.  All of the supporting cast is amazing – no throwaways, no whiffs.  And Yamada, Yamada…  She’s incredible, and in about 99% of the romcoms out there she would be the favorite character (and mine).  But Ichi is on another level.  He’s one of the greatest character creations in manga, no exaggeration – wins every fan poll for a reason.  It certainly doesn’t hurt if you identify with him (as the mangaka, director, sound director, and yours truly do) but I don’t think even that is necessary to appreciate how amazing a character this kid is.

What you have to understand about Kyou, incredibly complicated boy he may be, is relatively simple.  Almost all of his problems come from the fact that he thinks too much.  He’s a neurotic, I’m a neurotic, Sakurai Norio is a neurotic – this is what we do.  This is our life.  We get in our own way.  We look gift horses in the mouth.  We try (and generally successfully) to find reasons to worry about things and to doubt ourselves (or worse).  I remember being his age, when even normal children struggle with the hormonally-wrought confusion and mood swings, and piling that on top of being neurotic anyway is totally unfair.  Screw that – but that’s the fate the universe has laid out for us.  You find a way to get through it – or get lucky, and find someone to latch onto.

We start here with Ichi trying to justify the notion that he likes Yamada as a throwaway.  What does “like” even mean, anyway?  It can’t be the obvious answer (obviously) so it must be something else.  I love that Ichi thinks to himself that he’ll never turn into one of those poor fools who let their obsession drive them to abhorrent behavior (very self-aware for a 13 year-old – but that’s Kyou).  We then segue right into one of the most (in)famous comic scenes in manga, which finds Anna bringing yet another “do it yourself” product into the library.  This time around it’s Puruche, a kind of fruit drink mix but not quite, it’s more gooey.

Anna is, as ever, adorably weird and a complete dork.  Her “lately I’ve been really getting into cooking” is hilarious even if you don’t read the manga and know why it’s even more hilarious.  Some incredible moments here, among my favorites being when Anna says “go fetch me one” to Kyou’s suggestion of getting a bowl from the home ec room.  He dashes off, but she immediately follows to assure him she was kidding.  Sending him to fetch it is what the popular girl would do in a normal series, but I need say no more than that.

The science room scene is, as I say, legendary among manga fans.  I did think the anime might even skip it but no, they’re not taking the safe route so why start there?  I will say the way Norio drew those panels was even more suggestive in the manga (a lot of spit takes among readers when that first came out), but the gist of the moment definitely comes across.  “This is Puruche!” indeed.  The chem teacher walking in on them at that moment sets off a sort of chain reaction (pun intended) that will lead to an important development later in the episode, but it’s mainly one of the manga’s best sight gags (no pun intended).

Next up is the tale of Kanoya Rin (Serizawa Yuu), the girl who accidentally biffed Anna’s nose with a basketball.  Serina is pushing her to apologize and she’s stressing over it, and the moment finally comes in the library – with Ichikawa caught in the middle.  He has excellent powers of observation (as long as they’re directed outwards) and immediately sees what’s going on.  Eventually Rin does apologize and the girls bond over a face-swapping app (“Well, it’s big with me right now!”) but it turns out Anna didn’t even know it was Rin that hit her and ends up apologizing herself.  As does Serina, for getting so angry at Rin.  And she thanks Kyou, too, who’s so unused to this level of communication that he has no idea how to respond.

Those 828 words are all preamble, though, because the meat of the episode is what happens after.  Ichi has a new bike, which Anna immediately asks to take a ride on.  Obviously this (along with the decidedly un-girly way she sits) puts him on tilt – and he’s not unaware that he’s breaking the law here.  His chain of thought about what might happen is so on-point for a neurotic that it knocks me back in my chair.  Eventually the conversation turns to clubs.  He’s in the data processing club (which only meets once a week), and she says she’s going to have to quit the basketball club (work intruding on childhood again).  She suggests she might join the data processing club too – but Ichi doesn’t get the subtext here at all.

The other part of this sequence I love is the Papico-sharing (this series does more for Japanese candy than anything since Dagashi Kashi).  First she gives him the little mini-top of her “bottle” (“Oh, this is Yamada after all”).  But eventually she gives him a whole one as “thanks” for giving her a lift – after chiding him for being “afraid of change” for liking the original coffee flavor (subtext again).  He reciprocates her act, giving her the cap part – and then obsessively wonders if that was the right response.  The difference is, this time he absolutely nailed it.  That doesn’t stop him, however, from accidentally hailing a cab after obsessing over whether his goodbye wave was correct…

Finally, the McDonald’s scene.  This is a definite tentpole chapter, a mile marker.  First off, it introduces Kyou’s big sister Kana (Tamura Yukari), a college student.  She just barely registers here, but trust me – Kana should be in the inaugural class if they ever make an onee-san Hall of Fame.  I love, love, love her.  She’s taken Ichi with her to shop and eat lunch (just to spend time together).  He goes through the usual little brother embarrassment on her behalf, which kicks into overdrive when Anna arrives with Moe and Serina.  Anna takes an active interest in Ichi’s table, and he in hers when the girls start talking about being hit on.  But Kyou can’t hear Anna’s response because she’s shaking her “Shake-it” chicken seasoning bag.

So much here, so much…  Kana forcing her fries on Ichi, for starters – I have two older sisters and this pair always rings so true for me.  But it absolutely embarrasses the hell out of him, so Ichi bails for the registers downstairs – and Anna “bumps into him“.  After expressing jealousy (and a little relief) at finding out he has a sister, she asks what he’s getting, and he says Shake-it Chicken.  “Copying me, huh?” she teases.  She then muses that maybe she should buy something, maybe a soft-serve (in truth the best thing on Mac’s menu, along with maybe ¥100 coffee and the hotcakes set).

It’s a huge parade of subtext here.  Ichi, surprised that Anna is sharp enough to realize he’s copying her.  She notes she doesn’t have her wallet, and he asks her why she came downstairs.  “For the bathroom”, but… those are upstairs, too?  The moment when Ichi realizes (though he tries to convince himself otherwise) why Anna actually came downstairs was my first real “aha moment” with BokuYaba – when I truly realized how deep and how special this series is.  Even if Ichi can’t give Anna the soft serve he bought for her, the earth has truly moved here.  But it’s only the first stirrings of the tectonic shifts to come.

That’s the Everest of the episode, no question.  But it concludes with another important scene, where Anna begs Ichi to come with to the teacher’s room when she’s called onto the carpet for sneaking snacks into the library.  Their homeroom teacher Maeda-sensei (Nomura Kenji) – he too will be an important character – winds up in a sophistic battle with Ichi over whether Anna actually confessed.  Rather than being too pissed, he’s glad Kyou finally spoke up about something.  And on the way out, Anna again offers a thank you – this time a candy – and tells Ichi to just call her “Yamada” now (implying “we’re buddies”).  And you can pretty much put a fork in me, because that was like 1540 words and I’m done, even though it’s only the fourth episode…