One of the things that’s going to be a real shame if Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta only gets one season is that we won’t get to know the parents much.  They’re great – especially Kaede’s mom and Ai’s dad – but they really come into their own in the latter stages of the manga.  We’ve had a few cameos by Komura-san and only just what I’m not sure I could even call a cameo by Mie’s dad this week.  I still have hopes for that second season – in Japan at least there are signs the series is doing quite well – but I’m still not sure how that would work, given that S1 is using about 70% off the finished manga (an awkward amount).

It’s pretty clear that Kaede’s mom is a bit of a free spirit, and worries that her son is too uptight.  She’s the one who encouraged him to dye his hair (he thinks it looks terrible).  And now she’s trying to convince him to get a piercing or two.  This is all something of a role reversal but given Kaede’s personality type (which will be a key factor later in the episode) it makes sense.  Mom wants to help her boy stand out – he considers himself the type to blend in with the crowd as much as possible.  “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” mentality is deeply ingrained in the psyche of Japanese kids, and most really struggle to break free of it.

It’s middle school culture festival time, something which always has an air of unintended comedy to it in real life.  Mie-san is making a flapjack octopus (a creature so cute one of its proposed names was “adorabilis”), while Komura-kun is crafting a simple pincushion.  The issue here is that Ai has a 6 PM curfew (seriously, these are 9th-graders, come on).  Breaking it means a scolding and denial of cocoa the next morning, but when she sees Kaede being too friendly with the ever-meddling Someya-san, Ai decides to suffer that fate and stay late.  Unfortunately a spate of unanswered calls from Mom puts an end to that, and Kaede ends up following her home was her shoes (OK, that’s a little stalkerish).

The dynamic in the Mie household seems pretty clear cut.  Ai is obviously a big-time daddy’s girl – she mentions him all the time (never mom).  And he seems like the one who sticks up for her and pampers her, while her mother plays the bad cop role.  There’s always more to these situations than meets the eye, but from the kid’s perspective it’s a no-brainer how to feel.  Kaede does try to deflect the blame for Ai’s lateness by claiming he wore her shoes by mistake, but the next morning Mom lowers the boom – which Dad promptly raises back up again.

Given all this, Kaede getting dadzoned may not be such a terrible thing for him.  There’s that old saw about girls being attracted to guys like their father (my experience suggests that – and the boys/mothers converse – have some truth to them).  And it’s clear Ai is crazy about her dad, so when she says Kaede is “like a dad” she at least means it as a compliment.  I men, it’s not what a 14 year-old boy wants to hear, but he should take it as encouraging.  And that scene on the bleaches is easily the boldest we’ve seen Kaede get so far, so the bit is clearly in his teeth now.