While it’s frankly the sort of thing I’d rather ignore, things got ugly in the Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!! fandom this week. In the first place some manga readers were apparently upset that the anime has “toned down” the ecchier elements of the manga. In addition there’s apparently a teacher-student subtext in the manga as well, which the anime appears to have largely written out (I think there were the merest hints of it in the epilogue last week – it involves Hirose). But then word of all this must have filtered down to the troglodytes on twitter, and they attacked mangaka Syundei with enough vitriol to convince her to delete her social media presence entirely.

I don’t know exactly what went down here, but from the outside it looks to me like Syundei got bombarded from both sides – hardcore fans for the anime being dialed back (not her decision) and normies who discovered her more explicit body of BL work as a result and freaked out. As to the latter group, all I can say is get over yourselves. As my pal in the AMPAS used to say when he had to go to a screening of a “Twilight” movie or some such, “it’s not for me”. Who cares? Why get upset? As to the other side, butthurt manga readers are a staple of anime fandom and always will be.

Obviously this whole business of attacking creators because you don’t like editorial choices is dumb as a stump. One could make the case that Syundei overreacted – I mean, does she not know what twitter is like these days? But the bottom line is, it’s sad that she was attacked to the point where she did what she did. As to the changes in the adaptation, did anyone not think an 11-chapter manga being adapted into a 13-episode anime was going to be changed pretty radically? We’ve got a really nice series here, and just to my personal taste I would just as soon not see it venture down the teacher-student route. But why not just be happy it’s a good show? This is why we can’t have nice things.

Now to a much pleasanter topic, this week’s episode. On the whole I didn’t find it as charming as the first three (though the ED was great), in large part because the new character Aokiyama Reiko didn’t do a whole lot for me and she was a big presence. Apparently wacky girls are going to be a staple of the story but I like Kawamura a lot better than Aokiyama so far. The stuff with Nakamura and Hirose was better. For starters, Nakamura runs into Hirose with his childhood friend Ohmori-kun on the way to school and is immediately overcome by a fit of jealousy. Then the trio spot an octopus in a shop window and Nakamura goes all okatu-topus on them (“nine brains!”).

That’s when Aokiyama-san enters the fray. She tries to pass herself off as a member of the art club when she tries to browbeat Nakamura into joining, but he catches on that she’s actually with the horror and occult club. He disclaims all interest but she forces a vial of foul-smelling red liquid on him that she promises will bring him good luck. And sure enough, Hirose-kun talks to Nakamura several times that day, gives him candy, and even suggests they walk home together, as he has to drop off some handouts to a sick student in Nakamura’s neighborhood.

That whole business with the trio from “Mad Road High School” was… weird. It was amusing that they got First of the North Star icon Chiba Shigeru to play the boss, but then that whole business with Hirose having a cute face and then whipping out the cameras was pretty labored. Nakamura decides to trust his holy water and ride to the rescue, only to fall into a sewer. But when he emerges with said liquid all over his head (I first thought it was raw sewage, ROFL) he scares off the yankees but earns himself a reputation (thanks to Aokiyama) as a “school uniform zombie“.

What’s nice here is that Nakamura and Hirose are slowly and surely becoming what Nakamura thinks they can only be in fantasy, friends. When Nakamura forgets his social PTSD and lets himself be himself Hirose actually finds him funny. But when you’re a teen (and not just then) trusting others to like you for who you really are is one of the hardest things there is to do. I have no idea if this will ever develop into anything more than friendship, but it would be nice to think Nakamura-kun would be happy either way. You can never have too many friends, and Hirose seems like he’d be a good one to have.