With this much shit an an industrial warehouse-sized fan, it was pretty much inevitable that the twain should meet quickly once Natsuo went all-in (I humbly apologize) on his relationship with Hina-nee.  Disaster being inevitable suspense is in short supply here, but that’s fine.  Domestic na Kanojo has me in a pretty good place with all these characters – it’s wild and trashy enough that I can chuckle and shake my head as I watch the FUBAR happen, but I still sort of care because they’re both pretty realistic and kind of likeable (mostly).

The hard truth for me is this – most relationship anime could take a lesson from DomeKano, and that’s something I never expected to be saying.  Despite the premise it’s less demeaning to the human condition than most of them.  Because of the solidity and (Goc help me) restraint in the writing, it’s less preposterous than many of the more “serious” romances out there.  And it doesn’t feel the need to humiliate its characters (especially the guys) the way too many romcoms do for “laughs”.  It sits at the nexus point where numerous dark paths converge, but manages to avoid getting lost in any of them.

It would be very easy to get angry at DomeKano for having its characters make dumb mistakes – excepts these are dumb mistakes that seem totally in-character for these characters.  I mean, Natsuo should certainly know enough to make sure his alibi knew he was being used as such – Fumiya quite rightly berates Natsuo for that after the fact.  But he’s 17 and actually managed to finagle his way into a sexual relationship with the older woman he’s pined for lo these many years – it’s a miracle there are enough brain cells left over to put his socks on in the morning.

Indeed, things seem to be coming up trumps (I again humbly apologize) for Natsuo generally speaking.  In addition to his romantic dreams coming true, Kariya-sensei (who’s been skipping school to try and beat a deadline) offers to recommend his story from the literature club publication for a new writers award at his magazine.  There’s that niggling matter of Rui having visited the cafe and found out that the Fumiya story was a lie, but Natsuo manages to wriggle out of by chalking it up to visits to Momo’s house (still a bad thing to admit to Rui, but surely the lesser evil).  It really hits him hard, though, when Rui reminds him that his skipping evening meals means she’s forced to eat dinner alone – the sort of nice little touch that DomeKano expertly adds at strategic moments to really humanize the story.

The worm turns, though, when Natsuo jabs Miu-san a little too insistently about the crushing behavior she exhibited on their visit to Kariya’s house and she accidentally (?) pushes him down the stairs.  It’s ironic no doubt that the start of Natsuo’s literal and figurative downfall is a direct result of his talking about a student-on-teacher crush – some might even say poetic justice.  A broken leg is bad enough, but that leg puts a crimp on Natsuo’s nightly visits to Hina’s apartment and gives Rui the pretext to advance their relationship to the next level.

This is all a shame, really, because I don’t much blame any of these people (well- I do blame Hina some) for this mess.  Natsuo can’t help who he’s in love with, and in his circumstances anyone who says they could either turn Hina down or proactively admit the truth to Rui is probably a liar.  Rui, in fact, responds about as well as anyone might reasonably hope when she does (after reading Natsuo’s self-insert novel) figure out the truth.

And that’s one reason I like DomeKano a lot more than I expected, low bar though that was – the aftermath of Rui finding out could have been so much more degrading and awful, but it was really just sad.  She was hurt and angry, not violent – and Natsuo felt terrible, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped being in love with Hina.  It just sort of is – it sucks for everybody but then, love and family situations often do.  It’s obvious that anything between Hina and Natsuo can’t possibly end well, but you can’t simply turn off your feelings when they’re inconvenient (especially at 17).  There are hard lessons to be learned here for everyone, but that makes for good drama.