I have a couple of thoughts here. But overall, they add up to something very positive. Uchi no Otouto-domo ga Sumimasen seems to have an ability to win me over with stuff I instinctively want not to like. That comes down to execution – both in terms of the writing and the adaptation. Both of which are quite smart and very good, in my opinion. A big part of it is accepting that the romance angle between Gen and Ito is indeed inevitable, and giving the series a fair shot to win me over about it. Indeed, to win me over with a lot of the shoujo tropes it engages in with considerable aplomb.
Take Udagawa, for example. To be honest he’s sort of making the series for me, when on paper he should be wrecking it. He’s a walking shoujo romance cliche, but his impact on the story is overwhelmingly positive. First of all FukuJun – about whom I can run anywhere from brilliant to kind of annoying – could not be more at home in the role. Udagawa Mafuyu deflates a lot of balloons that need deflating. He greases the wheels of plot in a way they need to be greased. He’s genuinely entertaining. And he’s showing enough depth (yes, he has “layers”) that you feel like he’s a genuinely interesting part of the show as more than just a Greek chorus.
The culture fest is on, and all – again, all – of the Narita kyoudai are there. Even Syu, who accompanies Rui but panics and hides in the boys room. Rui is fine – he sets about documenting events for streaming and winning over a harem, who ply him with food and join him for a tour. Eventually Syu – having seen the hubbub around Gen’s performance as a “crazy hot” Prince in Snow White – ventures out. He stumbles upon Udagawa-kun and Ito-chan having a heart to heart in their usual quasi-antagonistic fashion (those two have real chemistry, I should note) and manages to “rescue” her. She didn’t need it, but it’s a good growth moment for him.
The other thing worth noting (not for the first time) is that if the show has to do the romance thing, it’s doing it in the right way. The feelings are there, and Ito is stressing over how complicated that is given their domestic situation. That’s a perfectly normal and reasonable turn of events, honestly. In Mafuyu Ito finally has someone she can come clean about this to. For all his irreverent caddishness he’s a sharp guy and certainly not shy about expressing his opinions, solicited or not. Of course he’s inevitably falling for her himself – probably not least because she actually shows interest in him as a person – but that’s surely not going anywhere.
This is all building up to the karaoke afterparty, a traditional venue for lovestruck adolescents to unwisely confess their true feelings in front of an audience. Gen has been roped into performing with his male co-star from the play (that gag was the one thing that didn’t work this week), so it’ll be interesting to see if this leads to any further developments between the main pair (if indeed it’s included in next week’s episode).
