It’s gonna be tough for a while, Blue Box. It usually takes away with one hand as it gives with the other. And by giving us Ayame it’s taking away my enjoyment whenever she’s on-screen and in-focus. But as I said last week, everyone will make up their own minds about her (as with Hina, and every character). I’ll focus any reflections on Manager-san to when they’re necessary to the plot. And who knows, maybe she’ll be better in the anime than the manga (which is a bar low enough to give Julia Edwards a hard time).
First, Chi is back. At the Inomata house, that is. Whether that’s a good or bad thing on the relationship front is open to debate, of course. On the night before she moves back in Chinatsu stays over at Karen’s house, and the two of them have a romance chat that Chi finds less than comfortable. She tells Karen that she sees her feelings for Taiki as a flower seedling that hasn’t bloomed yet. And because of basketball (her convenient excuse) she hasn’t had time to nurture it. Karen (turns out she’s Ayame’s big sister) tells her in no uncertain terms that as she waits for her own resolve to firm up, someone else may pluck that flower for themselves.
Karen is right that Chinatsu is the cautious type, at least on the romance front. But the hard truth is that with Taiki, it more naturally falls to her to be the aggressor. She’s a year and a half older at an age where that really matters. In Taiki’s position it’s incredibly hard to be open with his feelings for Chi, and even to fully comprehend what those feelings are and mean. Chinatsu may be the tortoise by temperament but the situation here really calls for the hare. By the time Taiki is mature enough to get up to speed, she may find herself left behind.
As for Ayame, she shows up at practice one day and is introduced by the coach as the new manager. The boys are thrilled at this ripped-from the pages of sports manga development. But it turns out Ayame only volunteered to be the manager because she has a crush on Yusa-kun – and wrongly assumed he was part of the team. As Karen tells Chi, Ayame is her polar opposite on the romance front. She flits from flower to flower even as Chi waits around for her one flower to blossom. Everyone does indeed move at their own pace on this score…
In the end Ayame is persuaded to stick around by the promise of seeing Yusa at tournaments at least. And Taichi is assigned to show her the ropes of being a manager. The rest of the episode is pretty standard misunderstanding comedy around Ayame and Taiki. The spider thing isn’t that funny the first time – the second is really pushing it. Neither is Hina’s reaction to the reality of their physical differences (pure cliche, that). But that sort of stuff is just punching the Ao no Hako ticket, really. Can’t board the train without doing it.
