We’re flirting with that “low bar” thing here for sure, but I’ll be honest.  If you’d told me this is what GoHands’ Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta would be after three episodes, I’d have taken it so fast it’d snap your face off.  Is it a great adaptation?  Obviously not.  But considering it’s GoHands, it’s more non-disastrous than I could reasonably have hoped for.  Especially after that vertigo-inducing open sequence.  Apart from a few odd perspective shots and an obsessive attachment to dust motes, visually these last two weeks have been almost normal.

Again, this is all relative.  But compared to something like the hatchet job Naz did on Samidare, this is a platinum treatment.  I’m not counting my chickens – this is still GoHands.  But I am enjoying it, and starting to allow myself to feel almost hopeful (dangerous, I know).  There are even things I quite like, mainly the way Ai is being portrayed.  Her facial expressions are spot-on (and they’re crucial), and I feel like the adaptation gets her character just about right.  Kaede is a bit too over the top (the seiyuu performance is part of that), but it’s nothing I can’t live with.

Another feather in the adaptation’s cap is casting Kimura Ryouhei as Azuma-kun because, let’s face it, casing Kimura Ryouhei is always a feather in a series’ cap.  And Azuma is not an unimportant character in this story, as this episode shows.  He’s the class idol, more or less.  Smart, athletic, even owns a german shepherd – no wonder he’s so popular.  He winds up helping Mie-san out when she’s searching for something in he bag, much to Kaede’s horror.  But the upshot of this incident is purely positive.  Her reaction is embarrassment (naturally) but the reason?  Because she was so casual with someone who wasn’t Komura-kun.  That’s a tell.

As I noted last week, this is one of the things I really like about Ai.  She’s basically artless.  She’s not putting on some dojikko or clueless act – she genuinely is clumsy without her glasses (that plastic bag-cat scene, so glad that was adapted).  And she doesn’t understand the implications of the things she says and does – she’s just being herself.   So when she says something like “please bully me, Komura-kun!” she genuinely is talking about shiritori.  Not that it’s any consolation to Komura-kun, who sees the nuance twice as hard as normal as if to make up her for near-sightedness.

This is a recurring theme this week, and indeed for much of the early part of the series.  Ai “forgetting” her glasses on her forehead is kind of a new twist (don’t kid yourself, most of us have done that).  On a day she genuinely forgets them she stumbles across a dropped love letter – addressed to Azuma-kun of course – and asks Kaede to read the envelope.  Determined to be responsible she carries it directly to his desk – again, having no idea whatsoever of how that act will be interpreted by her classmates.  It’s a lucky thing for everyone concerned that Azuma is a mensch, because if he wanted to be a jerk this incident gives him ample opportunity.

Because it is Mie-san, her puzzlement at why everyone keeps asking her about Azuma is totally genuine.  But again it’s her response – straight as an arrow with no deception or ulterior motive – that matters.  She’d understand if they were asking about Komura-kun, because she actually does like him – she’s “attached”.  This gift is a little too much for Kaede to process just yet.  As is the attempted assist from Azuma in the form of his “response” to the letter – Kaede can’t bring himself to spike that for the point even after a great job by the setter.  But it’s early days, and they two of them are but innocent lambs yet.