Sorry Asirpa – I can never think of “Hinna, hinna” the same way again…

Domestic na Kanojo has met some expectations and defied others.  And in both senses it’s been mostly for the better.  I certainly figured this show was going to be dramatic and a train wreck, but within that context the derailment has been depicted with surprising patience and realism.  That makes the payoff an effective one, at least so far, and even if the series totally blows it in the finale (which at this point is pretty unlikely – it’s about time I stopped expecting that to happen) I’ve been playing with house many since several hands back.

First things, first, and that’s Rui.  She’s certainly been the victim in the events of the past few episodes, which makes it easy to forget how made her entry into the narrative in the first place.  I don’t know exactly what happened at the end of the episode (I’ll get to that) but I want to think Rui had nothing to do with it.  She had the chance to out Hina and Natsuo to her parents, and chose not to.  Indeed, the worst thing she does is announce she’s going to start disliking Natsuo (even if I don’t think she really means it…) which she quite astutely notes is effectively a means of self-defense.

Rui does get a measure of revenge – she wins an award for her short story, while the far more experienced and prolific Natsuo and Miu get bupkis.  That really sucks for them, to have a newbie writer swoop in and leapfrog them on her first attempt.  Natsuo reacts by deciding he wants Kariya-sensei to take him on as an apprentice, which the latter is understandably reluctant to do.  Part of this I take to be a measure of Natsuo’s awareness of the future, for obvious reasons – he wants to write for a living, and that’s taken on a greater urgency in the last couple of episodes.

If indeed Kariya’s advice that struggling is a good place to start (and I tend to think it is) maybe that was Rui’s head start, even if it was a different sort of struggling.  In the midst of all this the class jets off to Okinawa for their school trip, which any veteran anime viewer would assume is going to kick up the drama with extreme prejudice.  There is indeed a clandestine meeting in Room 317, and Hina and Natsuo each have messages for each other – through they’re rather contradictory.  That’s not all Natsuo has for Hina (I’m talking about the ring, shut up), and I can’t be the only one who groaned when he did what he did.

I give Hina a certain minimal amount of credit for at least having the awareness to realize she was wrong, and to try and put a stop to all this before things get even worse.  But again, the heart wants what it wants – and I frankly have a hard time judging two people too harshly for being in love with each other.  The age difference is five years, not fifty – in truth if it weren’t for the aggravating circumstances that she’s his teacher and they’re step-siblings (I admit there’s a lot of “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” to that) their relationship wouldn’t be that far out of bounds.

That brings us to that.  There’s a definite pattern here – not locking the door, even when masturbating (I really didn’t need to hear that anecdote from Natsuo) – so not closing the blinds is right in character.  But the larger question is, who snapped that photo and narced Natsuo and Hina to the school?  As I said, I’d like to think it wasn’t Rui and I actually feel pretty confident it isn’t – so who does that leave?  Momo seems a likely candidate but honestly, as long as it’s not Rui I don’t care all that much.  And what happens as a result is more important, anyway.  We’ve reached the anime endgame here, the point where things can obviously no longer go on as they have, and I’m quite sure DomeKano has another dramatic turn or two to unleash before it’s done.