Well, credit where it’s due. I raised two more concerns about Uchi no Otouto-domo ga Sumimasen in my last post, and they were both in the crosshairs this week. That’s not to say I’m going to like the way they’re dealt with – that’s TBD. But they’re not being ignored, which is a good first step. Of course the whole Ito-Gen romance angle was already front and center so that’s no revelation. But what we saw here was an acknowledgement of just how awkward it is, and why.

I’ll say this much – Ito flat-out asking Gen if he was aroused by her was certainly a bold choice. Maybe I’m too hard on (no pun intended) Please Excuse My Younger Brothers for pursuing this angle. It is a trope, but I suppose when two 16 year-olds who’ve never met suddenly become housemates this is a real problem. I don’t think either of them is blameless here, for the record. She keeps pushing this doting/bossy older sister thing to the point of irritation. And the message he takes from it is that he doesn’t need to respect any boundaries, which he naturally seems not too concerned with in the first place.

Mom and Dad return from the great white north and a BBQ is held to celebrate. Rui does his best to encourage Syu to join in, but with no luck. He gives up and that’s that – which seems to be the general family strategy with Syu. This outing is a festival of innuendo with Gen and Ito, to the point where Raku (what, doesn’t he have a libido too?) scolds Gen for his lack of decorum. I do like the fact that the weirdness of this is at least being acknowledged openly here. A good first step, as I said, but down what path?

Then there’s Syu. As it turns out, he spends most of his time in a MMORPG – playing as a girl, in fact. We don’t know if he was this bad before Ito and her mother arrived – Gen tries to reassure her that he was, but that could be just that, reassurance. When everyone else is gone Ito heads out into the yard for some rage-weeding. She conveniently ignores the weather and gets heatstroke, forcing Syu to take action. My first thought is that he would just call 119 and stay hidden, but apparently the idea of talking to someone he doesn’t know was even more terrifying to him than dragging Ito inside and waiting for her to come around.

This is their first face to face meeting, in fact. That it happened is at least progress, I suppose. But Ito makes the situation worse by tricking Syu into letting her into his room, which basically causes a panic attack. This is the Catch-22 of severe social anxiety. The status quo is obviously terrible. But forcing matters usually seems to make things worse. I feel for Ito here – from her perspective, the fact that the others allow this situation to continue must seem like borderline neglect on their part. But she doesn’t know Syu, and she doesn’t understand the situation. By involving herself she takes a big risk of doing just what she did – exacerbating the problem.

Again, I’m very happy the show finally tackled this – it wasn’t a moment too soon. And not trivializing the severity of the problem is a good thing. We don’t know what happened that caused Syu to retreat like this – apparently there was a specific incident in middle school that did. It’s tempting to judge the family for leaving Syu isolated the way they did, but there are no easy solutions in these cases. Still – should the parents really be leaving when one of their sons is in this state? I do think that’s a valid question. Ito reaching out to Syu through the game is an interesting development. I just hope it doesn’t lead to this being resolved too neatly and easily to be realistic.