Well did she leave him to Chihaya
Or retreat to fight another day?
Although it said so on the T-shirt
NTR, that’s just not her way
Didn’t anybody tell her?
Didn’t anybody see?
Nuk-kun’s on the way to Grandma’s
Good boys can’t just let you be, oh yeah
As I noted earlier this week, I’m perfectly fine with Nuk-kun-kun getting with Anna – which is what I expect to happen eventually, if Makeine runs long enough. I like her and all. But in the broader sense I think I’m Team Lemon at this point. I love her whole free-swinging, freewheeling attitude. She’s so direct and so unburdened by the need to try and BS people about who she is. Maybe that mummy “costume” isn’t any more socially acceptable than draping yourself in velvet, but it’s Lemon to the max.
But this isn’t Lemon’s arc, it’s Komari’s. And I think, to an extent, all the arcs represent the nature of their heroines quite effectively. Anna’s was over the top and rather slapstick. Lemon’s was heartfelt and easily the most dramatic (and deep). And Komari’s? It’s relatively low-key. And juvenile – it’s a good way. As I suspected this is really more the school festival arc than the Komari arc. An important element to consider is that of the three, Komari’s “romance” was easily the most unrealistic. It was a 1st-year girl crushing on a 3rd-year guy (and at that age, those two years really matter). It was a childish fantasy, and in the end this is more about Komari the person than the romantic object.
But first, we have Karen (Waki Azumi). Heretofore she’s mostly been a figure of legend, occasionally seen in the distance, but now she becomes (very) real for Nuk-kun. His “8K vs. 4K” metaphor vis a vis Anna is obviously harsh, but it’s on-point. Karen is without a doubt amply possessed of many of the qualities prized by the superficial man. She seems genuinely friendly, to be fair, but for Anna that kind of makes it worse. The way this whole Nukumizu encounter was handled is reflective of how this series strikes a balance few LNs do in terms of being self-referential. It has no illusions about how vapid LN romcom cliches are, but doesn’t belabor the point – it just makes it with a certain wry affection and lets it speak for itself.
I don’t want to sell Komari’s plot short – to say it’s low-key and juvenile compared to the others is not really a criticism. I think what we saw here will resonate with any introvert – and she’s hard-core “I”, even compared to Kazuhiko. I think many of us reach a point in adolescence where it becomes clear to us that our introversion is making things hard in a world built for extroverts. We develop an awareness of what it deprives us of. And we have a desire to change it, if not always the ability. At 16 the belief is often that we can be “fixed” – and this invariably leads to heartbreak. As we get older we come to realize we were never broken in the first place, and what we need to do is adapt to the world rather than try and change it.
I think it’s because Kazuhiko is himself an introvert that he can see what Komari is going through with such clarity. And whether he realizes it or not, he’s maturing through his desire to help her – starting his own adapting process. Nuk-kun is legitimately a kind and empathetic person – truly a sweet kid if ever one existed. He’s gaining perspective on himself by watching Komari struggle, and helping her because he just can’t help helping. There needs to be a “physician, heal thyself” at some point – where he stops trying to be what others need him to be and worries about himself (and he still has issues, for sure). But really, I think he’s doing just fine for a 16 year-old boy. He’s growing in his own way.
As we see another series (The Elusive Samurai) seemingly fall victim to Umehara disease, it’s worth taking a moment to again praise Makeine for just how consistently gorgeous it is. Stuff like Konuki-sensei’s ceiling stain (I definitely wouldn’t want to hear that story either) is a good acid test for how serious a show is about the details. School festivals in general seem like a glorious canvas for really ambitious productions to strut their stuff, and this is no exception. We also got out first look at Chika’s house (and chibisukes), as Nuk-kun and Konuki (hmm) accompanied her home after she passed out from anime exhaustion. And if any image ever exemplified Nuk-kun, it’s him sitting in the dark watching over a sleeping Chika. What a good boy.
Again, though, the narrative still seems to be painting Kazuhiko and Anna as an inevitability. The interesting question is just how aware each of them is aware that this dance they’re engaging in is indeed a dance. Judging by their behavior – she jokingly teases the subject while he engages in rather intimate behavior with seeming disregard – suggests that Anna is the more tuned-in of the pair. At least consciously. You’d think Nuk-kun’s romantic “literacy” through LNs would help him spot the signs here, but maybe that lexicon is so elementally devoid of truth that it’s actually blinding him to it.
Guy Thompson
September 8, 2024 at 5:20 pmOnce again I’m curious how (and why) they managed to skip a lot small but very important conversations and interactions from LN having 5 whole episodes dedicated to a rather uneventful arc. I assume they want to leave the space for longer monologues/conversations in the last episodes.
Anyway, for Team Lemon shippers …
Guardian Enzo
September 8, 2024 at 5:46 pmAgain, too much information from future novel volumes.
Guy Thompson
September 8, 2024 at 6:11 pmDidn’t mean that as a spoiler or anything, sorry. Novel is not finished yet, far from it by the looks. Just one of hypothetical pathways that may or may not happen.
Nadavu
September 9, 2024 at 12:40 amI don’t see Nuk-kun dating either Lemon or Komari at any point. They like him, he likes them, but there’s nothing to suggest it’s anything beyond that. It’s different with Anna, of course. Her being the ‘main’ heroine, it feels almost inevitable that it will happen at some point. And certainly it’s being teased quite hard. But I while Nuk-kun would certainly date Anna if the opportunity presented itself, he isn’t exactly burning up with desire over her. She’s actually too close and too familiar to hold the same kind of mysterious allure that a Karen has. I also don’t think Anna will ever see him as an object of desire until he starts dating someone else. So hopefully, there’s a lot more to come.
JG Morgan
September 9, 2024 at 4:54 amWhat I really appreciate about Makeine is I can imagine many futures where Nuk-kun is happy but in different ways, whether from a relationship with Anna, Chika, Lemon, or none of them and maintaining a life-long friendship with all three. I’ve really been enjoying the Komari arc. I think of Nuk-kun as a sort of Kermit figure, a stable dependable straight man for the wilder characters who are going through greater emotional chaos to play off of. And of the three heroines Chika is the most muppety, with her muted gremlin little voice and skittish reactions. And her adorable wee sibs definitely confirmed that impression to me.
Guardian Enzo
September 9, 2024 at 6:40 amInteresting take. She is kind of Muppet-y, and just generally kid-like. She’s basically like a middle schooler still (she even has a touch of chuunibyou). And that’s nudged Nuk-kun into growing up a little looking after her.
Can there be any more good boy behavior than sitting in the dark watching over a girl you have no interest in romantically?
Brian Guy
September 9, 2024 at 11:16 amI think something we as observers have to admit is that, no matter how much Nukkun continues to identify himself as an introvert, he is in reality anything but; the gap between how he’s seen at a given point in the series and how he sees himself (and how even that gap is constantly narrowing) is one of the series primary dramatic drivers.
It’s front and center in this episode more than ever before as he takes the initiative to be proactive for the very first time, looking to stop Chika from falling rather than coincidentally being around to catch her afterwards. That he isn’t able to manage it directly speaks less to his development and more to the way her own issues have shaped her. She’s simply not able to accept help with what she’s taken responsibility for. (To be fair, it doesn’t appear as if much has been offered her before.)
But he’s developed enough to be able to change not only his tactics on the fly but also deliberately and effectively change someone else’s mind. Not completely, obviously, but enough. His understanding of who he is still lags reality, though, and it takes nearly the entire social network he’s been unwittingly building to keep him from failing the way he’d just stopped Komari from failing. He doesn’t have to do it all by himself anymore, either; people are drawn to him. Not that he gets that bit at this point, either, but he accepts it without thinking too deeply about it (another sign he’s nowhere near the introvert he imagines).
On a far less reflective note, there are chunks of story missing from this arc (as well as one important bit still unrevealed from the first arc) that will impact future seasons and I’m very interested to see how (or even if) that information eventually gets backfilled organically. The adaptation team has made their choices work for now, so I’ll trust in their ability to continue doing so. For now. (Plus i didn’t really have much of a choice, do i?)
Guardian Enzo
September 9, 2024 at 12:43 pmI would disagree here. An introvert learning to function in extrovert society doesn’t mean they’re no longer an introvert. It means they’re adapting. And, as with almost any personality type, there are infinite points on a spectrum. Early Kuroko is a point. Ichikawa is a point. Clearly, Chika is more introverted than Nuk-kun is, but he’s still on the same side of the equator.
Nadavu
September 9, 2024 at 7:53 pmI think Nukkun is a high-functioning introvert whereas Komari is probably on the autistic spectrum. They both default to prefer being on their own, but he can rather easily get along with people when he has to while she can barely speak properly even with the people she feels comparatively comfortable with.
Nicc
September 12, 2024 at 6:01 amFirst, we get an explanation why it looks like Halloween when it’s the school festival. It seems that everybody is dressing up in costumes so that it has become a de facto Halloween-themed school festival. Are we sure that Nukumizu isn’t a harem protagonist? He got himself into another lucky sukebe moment as we get a proper introduction to Himemiya, who we haven’t seen in person yet until this episode. We haven’t seen a lot of either Hakamada or Himemiya and I believe that they’re still the only couple that hasn’t been shown together yet. She’s friendly and sociable and I too can see why Yanami is still on good terms with her, while at the same time seeing her as a “homewrecker”. Ah, but maybe he doesn’t want to get too close lest he be comes a fourth wheel during Hakamada’s and Himemiya’s dates.
In the meantime, there’s still a lot of work to be done untl the festival and we get a helpful countdown for the days. Kaju worked quick and the food portion for the presentation is basically done. That’s about the only thing that Komari is not making herself do as she’s putting a lot of pressure on herself. She’s trying to show her senpai, her other clubmates and the school that she’s ready to be the next club prez. Now, she’ll definitely need help when it comes to recruiting and I don’t think that future VP Nukumizu will be able to help much in that department either, but that’s where Yanami and Yakishio should shine. But, that’s something to be addressed later. Right now, she nees to get this done and it’s been clear since the last episode that she’s doing too much on her own. She does collapse from exhaustion and there’s a nice scene where Komari and Nukumizu are at her place.
Being the good guy that he is and putting himself into the VP role, he supports her. Komari will get rested and work on part of it while he helps with everything else. Nukumizu has got good friends now too as the rest of the Lit Club pitches in and along with others. Kaju also drops by and I wonder how many rumors Nukumizu has set off now as he’s been seen with different girls on different occasions. They do finish on time and the set looks good. Yanami and Nukumizu get a moment together in the room, which is interrupted when new advisor Konuki-sensei is seen trying to record some new material. I still think that Yanami is carrying a torch for Hakamada and so there’s still a ways to go, notwithstanding Nukumizu not being able to pick up the hints. Also, having the losing heroines being unsuccessful the second time around would thematically fit, though that leaves Nukumizu with the… girls from the student council? I’m looking forward to see how the school festival goes.