I’ve always been in the camp that says demographic labels are overrated (and camp salted).  I read (and watch) series from all of them, and my year-end lists generally see all of them represented.  That said, if you were to tell me I could only choose one demographic for my animanga consumption, it would definitely be seinen.  The batting average is just higher with seinen – especially on the anime side, where they’re relatively uncommon (though not as rare as josei).  Certainly more of my favorite manga are seinen than anything else.  And we’re so damn lucky to have two terrific seinen romance series airing this season.

Skip and Loafer may be the most user-friendly of this season’s bumper crop of romcoms and relationship dramas.  There’s depth here, don’t get me wrong, but it leads with charm and gentle humor.  There’s no ecchi to speak of and even the look of the series is inviting and easy on the eyes.  It also falls more on the slice of life than the dramatic, I would say.  BokuYaba is all about the psychological upheavals of puberty, and Insomniacs and Yamada-kun are pretty event-driven.  Skip to Loafer and Tonikaku Cawaii are more focused on the pleasant mundanities of daily life, though the latter is obviously far more romance-focused.  That may change if the OP is to be believed, and the seeds for more dramatic material have been planted with this one too, but this season may not be long enough for them to bear fruit.

The big development is the arrival of Kurume Makoto (Han Megumi) on the scene.  I’m sure we got glances of her earlier, but I don’t recall Kurume-san speaking until this week.  Mitsumi, Sousuke, and Yuzuki run into her outside the student council office (this is part of an extended sight gag that works very well).  Kurume is determined to establish some sort of community ties, feeling she’s been frozen out of the cliques forming in the classroom.  However, she believes all the rumors about Mitsumi and dismisses Sousuke as a “himbo”.  She saves her fiercest disdain for Yuzuki, though – she represents everything Kurume finds threatening.

Kurume’s neurotic inner voice is the spine of the episode, and Han-san does a wonderful job here.  She’s a really superb seiyuu, both recongizable and versatile (a rare combo).  Her main problem (as with Ichikawa) is thinking too much, the bane of the neurotic.  She blocks everyone out because of the assumptions she makes about the assumptions they make about her.  It’s not as easy to bust through that and establish connections as this ep makes it out to be, but S & L clearly isn’t going for hyper-realism.  It helps that Mitsumi is indefatigable and relentless in making connections, and Sousuke is extremely emotionally intelligent and empathetic.  Kurume lucked out latching onto that pairing.

The trip to “Starmax” (Mitsumi was three hours by bus from the closest one back home) is an amusing diversion both for us and them, and it’s over boba Frappuccinos (seriously, yuck) that everyone bonds.  It’s Shima-kun (just black coffee)  who encourages Mitsumi to share LINE info with Kurume, who – realizing that Mitsumi is a harmless eccentric and Sousuke is actually a super-nice guy – begins to let her guard down.  By the end of the day she and Mitsumi are swapping selfies and she finally allows herself to believe she might actually have made a friend.

Asking Mitsumi on a “date” to go see Gone With the Wind – subject of a school report and playing in a revival at the “HOHO” Cinemas in Shibuya (where I saw many a film) – is a huge step for Kurume.  But Mitsumi is inexperienced at this, and doesn’t realize that inviting a bunch of their classmates along wasn’t what Kurume had in mind.  It’s Yuzuki who Kurume and Egashira (“Miss Tryhard” as ever) are especially disappointed to see come along.  I think the thing about feeling sorry for the gorgeous (and rich) can be a bit overplayed in manga to be honest, but I do feel for Yuzuki.  She can’t help how she looks, and it clearly makes it very hard for her to get close to girls her own age.  And presumably guys too, who just fawn over her like Yamada-kun (another one!?).

That whole “people like you” bit was definitely the darkest part of the episode.  But at least Yuzuki coming right out and calling it like it was made Kurume-san realize what a jerk she was being about the whole thing.  Again, this sort of growth generally doesn’t come that easily for 15 or 16 year-olds, and the reality in this series has more than a whiff of idealism to it.  But the characters are so relatable that I don’t think that matters all that much.  I’ll be very interested to see what fruit those seeds planted with Sousuke last week bear, but for now that seems to be on the back burner.